Faith-Based Rhetoric and Actions

Joseph and Hyrum Smith. [Source: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church, more commonly known as the Mormon Church), is murdered in an Illinois jail along with his brother Hyrum. The Smiths have been unpopular since the founding of the Mormon Church in the late 1820s. In 1832, a Christian mob tarred and feathered Joseph Smith. In 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered all Mormons expelled from his state; three days later, rogue militiamen massacred 17 Mormons, including children, at the Mormon settlement of Haun’s Mill. In 1844, Joseph and his brother Hyrum were charged with treason and jailed in Carthage, Illinois. A mob breaks into the prison and murders both men. Though five are charged with the murders, none are ever convicted. [Smithsonian Magazine, 10/2010]

A portion of a painting illustrating the street violence surrounding the ‘Bible Riots.’ [Source: Granger Collection / Smithsonian]Philadelphia is rocked by a series of conflicts that will become known as the “Bible Riots of 1844.” In the 1830s, Philadelphia, a large factory town, began simmering with conflicts and issues between a large and disparate number of groups, roughly divided into two: Irish and German immigrants, mostly Catholics, who are fighting for better working conditions and better treatments both through the Church and through the burgeoning labor movement; and “nativists,” a loose movement that has arisen in something of a backlash against the large influx of immigrants. Many of the Irish and German immigrants have become identified with urban Democratic political machines, sparking resentment among non-Democratic “native” Americans. The Irish in particular become targets of the “nativist” movement. In 1844, Catholics begin mounting complaints that their children are being forced to read from the Protestant King James Bible in public school every day. That version of the Bible (often abbreviated KJV) is required reading in Philadelphia public schools, in part because of the efforts of Pennsylvania legislator James Buchanan, who pushed through some of the country’s first legislation requiring public schools; however, the Pennsylvania legislature inserted language into the bill requiring daily Bible reading. Catholics see the mandated daily Bible readings as an attempt to undermine their religion, a view given credence when their requests that the KJV be substituted with Catholic Bibles are ignored. The complaints spark a series of riots that target Irish Catholic churches (no German Catholic churches are burned or vandalized, in part because Irish Catholics, a larger and more prominent group than the Germans, tend to be more vocal and are more closely identified with the “problem”). In response, groups of Irish Catholics target Protestant churches. The Philadelphia city government does little if anything to protect either group. Both sides accuse the other of vandalism and duplicity; the “nativists” insist that the Catholics want to install the Pope as the leader of the US government, and the Catholics accuse city officials of letting the “nativists” attack them at will. The riots result in a number of churches being partially or completely burned, at least 20 people dead, and the Irish Catholics becoming more forceful and more organized, taking a more aggressive part in politics and the labor movement. [Smithsonian Magazine, 10/2010; Patrick J. O'Hara, 2011]

The masthead for the March 7, 1939 issue of ‘Liberation,’ a magazine published by the ‘Silver Shirts.’ [Source: Georgetown Bookshop]White supremacist and ardent Nazi follower William Dudley Pelley, a New England native of what he calls “uncontaminated English stock,” founds the Silver Shirts, a neo-Nazi organization, in Asheville, North Carolina, the same day that Adolf Hitler ascends to power in Germany. Apparently Pelley funds the organization through the proceeds of a best-selling book, Seven Minutes in Eternity, in which he claimed to have died and gone to “the beyond” for a seven-minute period. Pelley and his followers, including Henry Lamont “Mike” Beach (see 1969), dress themselves in silver shirts emblazoned with a large cursive “L,” blue corduroy knickers, and gold stockings. Pelley considers himself a Republican, though he is not politically active in the usual sense. Anti-Semitic, Anti-Government - His efforts attract members from pro-Nazi groups, Ku Klux Klan chapters, and others sympathetic to his anti-Semitic views. In August 1933, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) will warn: “The Silver Shirts came into existence the early part of this year. They are enrolling white Protestant Christians as members of a Christian militia, through a plan of State encampments that are reported to extend into various states of the Union, with posts in every community.” According to Silver Shirt documents obtained by the AJC, the group intends to bring about the establishment of a strictly Christian government in the US; accuses President Roosevelt of being a “dictator” and “set[ting] aside the Constitution, which they desire to restore”; intends to “save [the] United States from a state of Sovietism into which… the Jews are leading the country”; accuses Jews of being a “money power” bent on destroying the nation’s economy via their “control” of the Federal Reserve; and says that “a people who constitute only 2.5 per cent of the population [Jews] to be held down to a 2.5 per cent influence in the American government, and we propose to see that it is brought about, race prejudice or no!” The group also advocates a form of direct democracy, in which citizens mail in their votes for or against pending legislation, and proposes the reorganization of America into what it calls a “colossus corporation,” where “[e]very citizen shall be both a common and a preferred stockholder.” Psychic Messages - Pelley claims to receive psychic messages from “the vastness of cosmos,” including two sets of documents, the “Esoteric Doctrines of the Liberation Enlightenment” and the “Liberation Scripts,” which set forth the “Christ government” he intends to establish. In a Silver Shirt newsletter, Pelley writes: “It is the order of things that those wicked and malignant spirits who have incarnated in certain sections of the Hebrew race trying to bring the downfall of the Christ Peoples, should meet a fearful fate in this closing of the Cycle of Cosmic Event. That contest is on-the-make and Hitler’s job it has been to do the advance work. But Hitler is not going to finish that work. THE FINISH OF IT COMES RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA!” Pelley writes that “the Jew” is possessed of a “nomadic character, making him an internationalist whose ultimate objectives may well mean the destruction and disappearance of the United States.” [American Jewish Committee, 8/24/1933; Ian Geldard, 2/19/1995; David Neiwert, 6/17/2003]Spike in Membership Will Dwindle - Pelley’s group will enjoy its largest membership of some 15,000 in 1934; four years later, the group will dwindle to around 5,000 members. [The Holocaust Chronicle, 2009] Pelley will be convicted of sedition in 1942, and by the time he emerges from prison in 1950, his Silver Shirts will have long since disappeared. 'Christian Fascist' - In the early 1980s, graduate student Karen Hoppes will write extensively about Pelley. She will write of his Christian fundamentalism: “[T]he link with fundamental Christianity establishes the uniqueness of American fascism. The majority of fascist groups justified their existence by their desire to change the United States into a Christian society.… The relationship between the religious identity of these groups and their political demands can be shown by a careful survey of their rhetoric. The Christian fascist does not distinguish between the application of the terms anti-Christ, Jew, and Communist. Neither does he distinguish between Gentile and Christian.” [David Neiwert, 6/17/2003]

A photo of the February 1939 Bund rally in Madison Square Garden. The backdrop depicts President George Washington. [Source: US Holocaust Museum]The German-American Bund, the most influential pro-Nazi movement in the US prior to World War II, holds a rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden that attracts some 20,000 participants. The rally is to protest for the rights of white Gentiles, whom the organization calls the “true patriots” of America. The Bund is led by Fritz Kuhn, an outspoken anti-Semite; at its height, the organization boasts some 25,000 members along with 8,000 “Storm Troopers.” Although the group portrays itself as patriotic Americans, even combining images of George Washington and the Nazi swastika, almost all of the members are German immigrants with ties and/or allegiances to Hitler’s Nazi movement. Public opinion polls show Kuhn is considered the most prominent anti-Semite in the nation. The party has little support outside of a few large cities. Shortly after the rally, Kuhn is investigated, found to have close ties to Germany’s Nazi Party, and eventually jailed for embezzling funds from the organization, causing many members to depart. In December 1941, the US government will outlaw the organization. [The Holocaust Chronicle, 2009; US Holocaust Museum, 2010; US Holocaust Museum, 2010]

One of a number of semi-official ‘Christian Identity’ logos. [Source: KingIdentity (.com)]The “Christian Identity” theology, formerly a fairly benign expression of what is known as “British-Israelism” or “Anglo-Israelism,” begins to spread throughout the US and Canada, particularly on the west coasts of these nations. This belief holds that white Americans and Canadians are the real descendants of the Biblical tribes of Israel. In 2003, author Nicole Nichols, an expert on far-right racist and religious groups in America, will define the concept of “Christian Identity” as practiced by many white supremacist and separatist groups. Christian Identity is not an organization, she will write, but an ideology that many organizations have adopted in some form or fashion. Christian Identity “elevates white supremacy and separatism to a Godly ideal,” she will write, calling it “the ideological fuel that fires much of the activity of the racist far right.” According to Christian Identity theology, Jews are neither the “true Israelites” nor the true “chosen people” of God; instead, Christian Identity proponents claim, Jews are descended from an Asiatic people known as the Khazars, who settled near the Black Sea during the Middle Ages. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005; Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006] In 2005, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance will write, “Followers tend to be involved in political movements opposing gun control, equal rights to gays and lesbians, and militia movements,” and quote Michael Barkun, an expert on radical-right groups, as saying, “This virulent racist and anti-Semitic theology… is prevalent among many right-wing extremist groups and has been called the ‘glue’ of the racist right.” [Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006]Beginnings; 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - In the 1920s, William J. Cameron, editor of the Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, popularized the anti-Semitic hoax manuscript called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which purported to detail the “secret teachings” of Judaism, including the planned takeover of the world’s governments, the subjugation of non-Semitic races, and the bizarre, cannibalistic rituals supposedly practiced by Jews. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]Wesley Swift and 'Mud People' - In the 1940s, a former Methodist minister, Wesley Swift, started his own church, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Swift had deep ties to a number of radical right-wing groups including the Ku Klux Klan; Swift and his associates set the stage for the mutation of the Christian Identity into a loosely organized set of virulently anti-Semitic, racist belief systems that will come to be grouped together under the “Christian Identity” rubric. Swift himself taught that only the white race was created in the form of God, while Asian and African races were created from the “beasts of the fields,” and thusly are subhuman creations. In Swift’s version of Genesis, Eve, the wife of the first “true” man Adam, was seduced by The Serpent, who masqeueraded as a white man. Eve bore a son, Cain, who is the actual father of the Jewish people. This reinterpretation, sometimes called the “two-seed” or “seedliner” theory, supports the Christian Identity propensity to demonize Jews, whom Swift and others labeled the “spawn of Satan.” Today’s white Europeans and their American and Canadian descendants, Swift taught, are descended from the “true son” of Adam and Eve, Abel, and are the actual “chosen people” of God. Some Christian Identity adherents go even farther, claiming that subhuman “pre-Adamic” races existed and “spawned” the non-white races of the world, which they label “mud people.” [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]Permeates Racist, Far-Right Groups - By the 1960s, a new group of Christian Identity leaders emerges to spread the Identity theology through the radical, racist right in America and Canada, popularizing the once-obscure ideology. Most prominent among them are three disciples of Swift: James K. Warner, William Potter Gale, and Richard Butler. Warner, who will move to Louisiana and play a leading role in the fight against civil rights, founds the Christian Defense League and the New Christian Crusade Church. Gale, an early leader of the Christian Defense League and its paramilitary arm, the California Rangers, goes on to found the Posse Comitatus (see 1969), the group that will help bring about the sovereign citizen movement. Gale will later found the Committee of the States and serve as the “chief of staff” of its “unorganized militia.” Butler moves Swift’s Church of Jesus Christ Christian to Idaho and recasts it as the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s). Under the leadership of Butler, Gale, Warner, and others, Christian Identity soon permeates most of the major far-right movements, including the Klan and a racist “skinhead” organization known as the Hammerskins. It also penetrates many extreme anti-government activist groups. The Anti-Defamation League will write, “The resurgence of right-wing extremism in the 1990s following the Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992) and Waco standoffs (see April 19, 1993) further spread Identity beliefs.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] Nichols will write: “Christian Identity enclaves provide a trail of safe havens for movement activists, stretching from Hayden Lake in northern Idaho (the Aryan Nations stronghold) to Elohim City on the Oklahoma/Arkansas border (see 1973 and After). Many white supremacists on the run from federal authorities have found shelter and support from Christian Identity followers.” Some organizations such as the Montana Militia are headed by Identity adherents, but do not as a group promote the theology. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]Bringing Forth the Apocalypse - Many Christian Identity adherents believe that the Biblical Apocalypse—the end of the world as it is currently known and the final ascendancy of select Christians over all others—is coming soon. Unlike some Christians, Identity adherents do not generally believe in the “rapture,” or the ascendancy of “saved” Christians to Heaven before the Apocalypse ensues; instead, Identity followers believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth only after the time of the “Tribulation,” a great battle between good and evil, which will set the stage for the return of Christ and the final transformation of the world. Identity followers believe it is their duty to prepare for the Apocalypse, and some believe it is their duty to help bring it about. They tend to cast the Apocalypse in racial terms—whites vs. nonwhites. Identity adherents believe that worldly institutions will collapse during the “end times,” and therefore tend to distrust such institutions, making Identity theology appealing to anti-government ideologies of groups such as militia, “Patriot,” and sovereign citizens groups. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]21st Century Identity - In the 21st century, Christian Identity groups are strongest in the Pacific Northwest of America and Canada, and the US Midwest, though Identity churches can be found throughout the US and in other parts of Canada. Identity churches also exist in, among other nations, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa (see June 25, 2003). The Anti-Defamation League will write: “Yet while spread far it is also spread thin. Estimates of the total number of believers in North America vary from a low of 25,000 to a high of 50,000; the true number is probably closer to the low end of the scale. Given this relatively small following, its extensive penetration of the far right is all the more remarkable.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]Identity Violence - Identity adherents commit a number of violent acts, often against government and/or financial institutions, in an outsized proportion to their small numbers. In 1983, Identity adherent Gordon Kahl kills two US Marshals who attempt to arrest him on a parole violation, and kills an Arkansas sheriff before finally being gunned down by authorities (see February 13, 1983 and After). The white supremacist terrorist group The Order (see Late September 1983) contains a number of Identity members, including David Tate, who kills a Missouri Highway Patrol officer while attempting to flee to an Identity survivalist compound (see April 15, 1985). During the 1980s, small Identity groups such as The New Order (or The Order II) and the Arizona Patriots commit bombings and armored car robberies. After the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), Identity minister Willie Ray Lampley attempts a number of bombings (see November 9, 1995). In 1996, the Montana Freeman, led by Identity members, “stands off” federal authorities for 81 days (see March 25, 1996). Between 1996 and 1998, Eric Robert Rudolph, who has connections to Identity ministers such as Nord Davis and Dan Gayman, bombs an Atlanta gay bar (see February 21, 1997), several abortion clinics (see October 14, 1998), and the Atlanta Summer Olympics (see July 27, 1996 and After). In 1999, Identity member and former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow goes on a shooting spree at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles (see August 10, 1999). [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Farmer and mechanic Gordon Kahl, a World War II veteran who earned two Purple Hearts while flying bombing missions and a convert to the Christian Identity “religion” (see 1960s and After), now embraces the burgeoning anti-tax protest ideology (see 1951-1967). He writes a letter to the IRS telling it that he will never again “give aid and comfort to the enemies of Christ” by paying income taxes, which he calls tithing to “the synagogue of Satan.” Kahl is a virulent anti-Semite who believes that World War II was engineered by Jewish bankers who had “created” and backed Adolf Hitler in order to subjugate “the feisty German people.” Kahl denies that the Holocaust ever occurred, calling the concentration camps “mostly work camps” where less than 50,000 Jews died. Communism, he writes, is a “smoke screen” for “world Jewry,” which uses every means at its disposal—including the Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs—to deceive and undermine Christians. To his friends and family, Kahl is a loving father and husband and a scrupulously honest businessman, but as author Daniel Levitas will write in 2003: “These virtuous aspects of his character did not extend beyond his small Anglo-Saxon circle, however. Kahl’s world was divided strictly into opposites and he felt only murderous contempt for those who fell on the other side of the line—satanic Jews, nonwhites, and the Christian lackeys of the International Jewish Conspiracy.” Kahl is a firm believer in ZOG, the “Zionist Occupied Government” of the United States, and he believes that most law enforcement officials are either unwitting dupes of this “conspiracy” or knowing members. Kahl leaves California for the West Texas oilfields, and in 1973 joins the anti-tax, anti-government Posse Comitatus (see 1969). [Levitas, 2002, pp. 193] Kahl will be convicted of tax evasion (see 1975 - 1981) and, fleeing incarceration, will kill two police officers in a shootout and later die himself after killing a third (see February 13, 1983 and After and March 13 - June 3, 1983).

The logo of the Posse Comitatus. [Source: Underground News Network]The Posse Comitatus, an anti-Semitic, right-wing “Christian Identity” organization (see 1960s and After), is founded by retired dry-cleaning executive Henry L. Beach in Portland, Oregon, who calls his organization the Sherriff’s Posse Comitatus (SPC) or Citizen’s Law Enforcement Research Committee (CLERC). Beach has supported Nazism since the 1930s, and formerly led a neo-Nazi organization called the Silver Shirts (see January 31, 1933). The Posse Comitatus is quickly taken over by William Potter Gale, a retired Army colonel who founded a similar organization called the US Christian Posse Association in Glendale, California, and manages to roll the two groups, and a few other loosely organized entities, into one. The Posse Comitatus dedicates itself to survivalism, vigilantism, and anti-government activities; its bylaws state that no federal or state governmental entity has any legal standing, and only county and town governments are legitimate. Furthermore, the organization believes that the entire federal government is controlled by Jews, and as such has no authority over whites. Beach’s original Posse manual states, “[O]fficials of government who commit criminal acts or who violate their oath of office… shall be removed by the posse to the most populated intersection of streets in the township and, at high noon, be hung by the neck, the body remaining until sundown as an example to those who would subvert the law.” According to a 1986 advisory published by the IRS, “members associated with some of the Posse groups wear tiny gold hangmen’s nooses on their lapels.” Posse members refuse to pay taxes whenever they can get away with it, and ignore laws that they feel cannot be enforced by “the enemy.” Instead, they claim to abide by a “common law,” defined as a set of principles that they themselves create and change at will. The organization begins making inroads into the farm communities of the Northwest and Upper Midwest after federal mismanagement of agricultural policies threatens the livelihood of many area farmers; the Posse tells them, “Farmers are victims of a Jewish-controlled government and banking system, federal taxes are illegal and loans need not be repaid.” Some area farmers embrace the message, and the Posse begins heavily recruiting in Michigan. [Ian Geldard, 2/19/1995; Nicole Nichols, 2003]Anti-Government, Anti-Tax Ideology - The Posse Comitatus believes that the federal and state governments are inherently illegal and have no authority whatsoever; the highest elected official of the land, it says, is the county sheriff, who can form juries and call out “posses” of citizens to enforce the law as necessary. The movement strongly opposes paying taxes, particularly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and considers money issued by the Federal Reserve System as illegal. It says that the Constitution’s 16th Amendment, which gave Congress the right to tax citizens’ incomes, was illegally ratified and therefore unconstitutional; moreover, it says, careful examination of federal law tells it that income taxes are entirely voluntary. The Federal Reserve System is, as one Posse publication puts it, “a private monopoly which neither the people nor the states authorized in the Constitution.” The Federal Reserve’s printed money violates the Constitution. Some, but not all, Posse Comitatus members also express racist and separatist views similar to those of Christian Identity believers (see 1960s and After); these members say that the Federal Reserve is controlled by a small cabal of international Jewish bankers who intend to destroy the American economy. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; US Constitution: Sixteenth Amendment, 2011; Anti-Defamation League, 2011] Posse Comitatus members use the threat of violence, and sometimes actual violence, to express their anti-tax and anti-government ideologies (see 1972 and 1974). Township Movement - The Posse spawns a directly related ideology, the “township movement,” led in part by Utah resident Walt P. Mann. Township advocates advocate setting up small sovereign communities that are answerable only to themselves. The Posse will set up a “constitutional township” on a 1,400-acre plot in Wisconsin and name it “Tigerton Dells,” posting signs that say, “Federal Agents Keep out; Survivors will be Prosecuted.” Tigerton Dells will appoint its own judges and foreign ambassadors before federal authorities seize the property (see 1984). Movement Spreads throughout Northwest, Plains States - By 1976, an FBI report says that the Posse Comitatus movement will consist of up to 50,000 adherents throughout the Northwest and Great Plains states. The center of the movement is at Tigerton Dells; Posse members there will disrupt local government meetings and assault public officials. The farm crisis of the early 1980s will allow the Posse to begin converting angry, frightened farmers throughout the region. In 1996, the Anti-Defamation League’s Mark Pitcavage will write, “The Posse offered up targets for people to blame: the courts, the money system, the federal government, the Jews.” Waging Legal Battles - While some Posse members offer violence to law enforcement and public officials (see February 13, 1983 and After), most of their battles with the government take place in court. Posse members most frequently use two common legal strategems: filing frivolous liens on the properties of public officials who oppose or anger them, particularly IRS agents, and flooding the courts with a barrage of legal documents, filings, motions, and appeals. The liens carry no legal weight but sometimes damage the recipients’ credit scores and interfere with the recipients’ ability to buy or sell property. The court documents, often written in arcane, archaic, and contradictory legal language, clog the court system and frustate judges and prosecutors. A related tactic is the establishment of “common law courts,” vigilante courts that often threaten public officials. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]Inspiration to Other Groups - The Posse Comitatus’s ideology will inspire other anti-government groups, such as the Montana Freemen (see 1993-1994).

William Pierce. [Source: Qbitblog (.com)]William Pierce, a white supremacist and a senior research scientist at Pratt and Whitney Advanced Materials Research and Development Laboratory in New Haven, Connecticut, quits the National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP), the remnants of the American Nazi Party (ANP), which had begun to collapse after the August 1967 assassination of its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, Pierce’s mentor. Pierce leaves the organization after a violent argument with its leadership and joins the National Youth Alliance (NYA). This group formed from what was Youth for Wallace, a 1968 organization founded by Willis Carto to garner support on college campuses for segregationist George Wallace (D-AL)‘s third-party presidential campaign (see 1964 and May 15, 1972). After the 1968 election, the group renamed itself and continued its work on university campuses. In 1974, after a bitter power struggle between Carto and Pierce, the organization splinters. Pierce calls his burgeoning organization the National Alliance, incorporating it in February 1974. In 2002, Carto will tell a reporter: “I started the Youth for Wallace. After the election, the Youth for Wallace head Louis Byers, he took the mailing list and went to Pierce and made a deal. That’s where the National Youth Alliance came from, then Pierce changed the name.” Carto will form the Liberty Lobby, which will publish a prominent white supremacist tabloid, The Spotlight, and will found the Institute for Historical Review, which will specialize in “proving” the Holocaust never happened. Pierce and Carto will remain bitter rivals. Pierce will write The Turner Diaries, an inflammatory “future history” of a white revolution in America that leads to the overthrow of the government and the extermination of minorities (see 1978), which Pierce will serialize in the Alliance’s newsletter, “Attack!” (later renamed “National Vanguard”). [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ] Pierce is joined in creating the National Alliance by former John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) co-founder Revilo P. Oliver. Pierce and Oliver will soon name Adolf Hitler “the greatest man of our era.” [NewsOne, 2/24/2010]

The Aryan Nations logo. [Source: Southern Poverty Law Center]Aerospace engineer and white racist Richard Butler, who departed California in the early 1970s and moved into a rural farmhouse in Hayden Lake, Idaho, founds and develops one of the nation’s most notorious and violent white separatist groups, the Aryan Nations. Butler’s 20-acre farmhouse becomes the compound for the group and its affiliated church, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian; Butler and his nascent organization envision a “whites-only” “homeland” in the Pacific Northwest. At age 11, Butler read a serialized novel in Liberty Magazine, depicting the takeover of the US by “race-mixing Bolsheviks” that deeply impressed him. As a young man, he worked as an aeronautical engineer in India, where he was fascinated by the Indian caste structure and the concept of racial purity. In 1941 he left a Los Angeles church after concluding that the preacher was spreading Communist doctrine. During World War II, as an Army engineer, he became fascinated by the German military, and later recalls that he “was thrilled to see the movies of the marching Germans.… In those days, all we knew was that Hitler hated communists, and so did my folks—as we did as teenagers.” In the 1950s, Butler was enthralled by radio broadcasts of then-Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and his “Red scare” accusations, and sent money to support McCarthy’s political campaigns. During that time, Butler met William Potter Gale, another white supremacist who went on to found the Posse Comitatus (see 1969). Butler held a high position in the Christian Defense League, an organization founded by the Reverend Wesley Swift and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “virulently anti-Semitic,” until 1965, and shortly thereafter became a mail-order “ordained minister” of Christian Identity, a white supremacist offshoot of the Christian church (see 1960s and After). Butler buys the farmhouse in Hayden Lake and founds his own “Christian Posse Comitatus,” and thereafter founds the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. The two groups merge into what later becomes known as Aryan Nations. [Washington Post, 6/2/2003; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Andreas Strassmeir, a frequent Elohim City resident and arms expert. [Source: Eye on Hate (.com)]Robert Millar, a former Mennonite who left Canada for the US in the early 1950s, moves to the Ozark Mountain region of eastern Oklahoma and founds what he calls “Elohim City,” a small compound populated by his four sons and 12 other followers. Elohim City grows to become a 400-acre compound populated with 70 to 100 “Christian Identity” white supremacists and religious extremists, who believe that whites are the only true people and all others are subhuman “mud people” (see 1960s and After). Elohim is a Hebrew word for God. Elohim City, accessible only via a rocky road and a single steel bridge, soon becomes a haven for violent right-wing extremists, including Timothy McVeigh, who will call the compound two weeks before bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and Andreas “Andy the German” Strassmeir, a German weapons buff with ties to neo-Nazi groups and an alleged co-conspirator of McVeigh’s (see August 1994 - March 1995). The residents receive intensive paramilitary training, often led by Strassmeir, and the compound contains a large arsenal of weapons. Elohim City becomes the headquarters of the Aryan Republican Army (see 1992 - 1995), an organization that has Strassmeir as its “chief of security.” Some of the Elohim City residents such as ARA member Dennis Mahon come to believe that Strassmeir is a government informant. Author Nicole Nichols, an expert on right-wing hate groups, will later say she believes Strassmeir is the infamous “John Doe #2” of the Oklahoma City bombing (see April 20, 1995). [Associated Press, 2/23/1997; Time, 2/24/1997; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003] A 2002 report by the Anti-Defamation League says that after the Oklahoma City bombing, Elohim City changes to become a less militant settlement, populated largely by white separatists and religious fundamentalists seeking to withdraw from the world. Before his death in 2001, Millar says: “Somebody said, ‘You’re not a racist, you’re a purist.’ I sort of liked that.” John Millar, who becomes the community leader after his father’s death, says: “[W]e consider ourselves survivalists in the sense that we want to survive the best way we can.… We have weapons, but any person within 15 miles of us has more weapons per household than we do. We don’t make a big thing about weapons. We don’t think we can keep the National Guard away with a few weapons.” An unnamed government informer tells a New York Post reporter in June 2001: “McVeigh is a hero inside Elohim City. They look upon him ‘as a martyr to their cause.’” [Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002]

James Wickstrom. [Source: Southern Poverty Law Center]James Wickstrom, a tool salesman and former mill worker angered by what he saw as less-qualified African-American workers bypassing him in receiving raises and promotions, meets Thomas Stockheimer (see 1974), a member of the violent anti-tax, racist, and anti-Semitic organization Posse Comitatus (see 1969). Wickstrom walks by Stockheimer’s “Little People’s Tax Party” office in Racine, Wisconsin, each week, and is accosted by Stockheimer, who asks him: “Do you know who you are? Do you really know who you are? Do you know that you’re an Israelite?” Initially Wickstrom is offended at being called, he believes, a Jew, but after a discussion, leaves with two audiotapes of sermons by Posse founder William Potter Gale that tell him he is a member of God’s chosen people, a member of the “true” Israelite tribe; Jews are the offspring of Satan and are unworthy of being called Israelites. Blacks, Gale preaches, are subhuman, no better than beasts of the field, and merely tools of the Jewish conspiracy to destroy white Western society. Wickstrom finds Gale’s message appealing, and he joins Stockheimer in setting up a Bible study group. Wickstrom follows in Gale’s footsteps and becomes an adherent of the Christian Identity ideology (see 1960s and After). Stockheimer flees Racine ahead of the police, who intend to have him complete his jail sentence for assaulting an IRS agent, and Wickstrom quits his job and moves to Schell City, Missouri; he will later explain the move, saying, “I wanted to be with like-minded people.” He buys property near Identity minister Dan Gayman, becomes a teacher at a small private school operated by Gayman and another Identity minister, Loren Kallstrom, and in 1977 founds his own church, Mission of Jesus the Christ Church, living off tithes and donations. After a falling out with Gayman, in 1978 Wickstrom moves back to Wisconsin, at the invitation of Posse member Donald Minniecheske, who wants him to take part in the establishment of a Posse compound on the shores of the Embarrass River (see 1978 - 1983). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), begins holding weekly meetings of the Cosmotheist Community Church (CCC), a religion of his own creation that promotes white supremacy. Pierce, who was turned down by the IRS in his 1977 attempts to persuade it to classify the Alliance as a tax-exempt “educational” organization, will succeed in getting the IRS to classify the CCC as a religious tax-exempt organization in 1983, though that status will be largely revoked in 1986. [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Cover of ‘The Turner Diaries.’ [Source: Associated Content]White supremacist and separatist William Pierce, a leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), publishes a novel called The Turner Diaries under the pseudonym “Andrew Macdonald.” Former College Professor - Pierce has a doctorate in physics from the University of Colorado, and taught at Oregon State University for three years before joining the American Nazi Party, taking over leadership of the group after its head, George Lincoln Rockwell, was assassinated. In 1970, Pierce and others left that organization and joined the National Youth Alliance, later renamed the National Alliance. He will later say that the violence and disruption of the civil rights movement prompted his decision to join Nazi and white supremacist organizations. “I became concerned with the general abandonment of standards and long-accepted values,” he will write. “The standards of excellence that had prevailed at most universities were becoming abandoned ideas that were in the way of social progress for people of color. The old-fogey standards had to go, and now we had to judge students and professors by the new standards of social relevance and performance. That concerned me a lot.” Genocidal 'Future History' - The novel is a “future history” of the US after the nation, and eventually the world, is “purged” of “inferior” races via an Aryan revolution that overthrows the US government and puts white “Aryans” in charge. Pierce actually began the book as a series of installments for the racist tabloid “Attack!” a publication of the National Youth Alliance. The Anti-Defamation League will term the book “[l]urid, violent, apocalyptic, misogynistic, racist, and anti-Semitic.” The book is privately printed through the National Alliance’s National Vanguard Press, but in 1998, independent publisher Barricade Books will begin publishing it as well. From 1975 through 1978, Pierce serialized the novel in the Alliance’s newsletter, “Attack!” (later renamed “National Vanguard”). In March 1997, he will explain his rationale for writing the novel, saying: “In 1975, when I began writing The Turner Diaries… I wanted to take all of the feminist agitators and propagandists and all of the race-mixing fanatics and all of the media bosses and all of the bureaucrats and politicians who were collaborating with them, and I wanted to put them up against a wall, in batches of a thousand or so at a time, and machine-gun them. And I still want to do that. I am convinced that one day we will have to do that before we can get our civilization back on track, and I look forward to the day.” Fictional Story Inspires Oklahoma City Bombing - The story hinges on the experiences and “recollections” of Earl Turner, an Aryan separatist who chronicles the extermination of minorities, Jews, and other “undesirables” via an armed insurrection. The book will become highly influential in far-right circles. One of the most notable scenes in it is that of Turner’s guerrilla unit detonating a homemade “fertilizer bomb” at FBI headquarters, killing hundreds; the ADL will note it as “a passage that came to be seen as foreshadowing, and as an inspiration to, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh” (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). The white supremacist guerrilla army of the book is called “The Organization”; its vocabulary and methodologies will be adopted to one extend or another by a number of white supremacist and separatist organizations. The novel begins by stating: “If the White nations of the world had not allowed themselves to become subject to the Jew, to Jewish ideas, to the Jewish spirit, this war would not be necessary. We can hardly consider ourselves blameless. We can hardly say we had no choice, no chance to avoid the Jew’s snare. We can hardly say we were not warned.… The people had finally had their fill of the Jews and their tricks.… If the Organization survives this contest, no Jew will—anywhere. We’ll go to the Uttermost ends of the earth to hunt down the last of Satan’s spawn.” The revolution of the “Organization” is triggered by the passage of the “Cohen Act,” legislation which effectively bans Americans from owning weapons. Pierce writes that the forcible disarming of the citizenry results in anarchy: “Robberies of this sort had become all too common since the Cohen Act, with groups of Blacks forcing their way into White homes to rob and rape, knowing that even if their victims had guns they would probably not dare use them.” The book depicts scenes of violence in gory, graphic detail (including torture and racially-motivated lynchings), and gives detailed explanations of how the characters construct a variety of explosive devices. The book gives the rationale for its fictional murder of hundreds at the FBI building: “It is a heavy burden of responsibility for us to bear, since most of the victims of our bomb were only pawns who were no more committed to the sick philosophy or the racially destructive goals of the System than we are. But there is no way we can destroy the System without hurting many thousands of innocent people.… And if we don’t destroy the System before it destroys us… our whole race will die.” In the novel, Turner dies during a successful suicide mission, when he detonates a nuclear weapon over the Pentagon. White domination of the planet is ultimately achieved by the massive deployment of nuclear weapons. Organizations such as The Order (which will carry out the murder of progressive talk show host Alan Berg—see June 18, 1984 and After), The New Order, and the Aryan Republican Army (see 1992 - 1995) will cite the novel as inspiration for their efforts. [New York Times, 7/5/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 99; Center for New Community, 8/2002 ; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2004; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]Inspiration for Texas Murder - In Texas in 1998, when African-American James Byrd Jr. is beaten and dragged to his death behind a pickup truck (see June 7, 1998 and After), one of his assailants, John King, will say, “We’re starting The Turner Diaries early.” Sparks Many Imitators - The novel will spark a number of imitations, including 2003’s Angle Iron, about a right-wing attack on the US power grid; 2001’s Dark Millennium, depicting a white supremacist president presiding over the extermination of African-Americans; 2004’s Deep Blue, which transports the racial themes into a science-fictional presentation; 2001’s Hold Back This Day, in which whites establish an Aryan colony on Mars; 1999’s One in a Million, in which a white separatist declares war on the IRS; 2001’s The Outsider, whose white hero goes on a murderous spree among African-Americans; and 1991’s Serpent’s Walk, in which a resurgent Nazi underground claims the planet for its own. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2004]Wide Influence - Both Pierce and his novel will become highly influential in white supremacist and anti-government circles. Jerry Dale, a West Virginia sheriff who monitors Pierce for years, says: “He’s become a spiritual leader. He’s not a nut. Looking at him and talking to him, you don’t get a feeling he’s crazy. He’s not violent. But the way he incites people, to me, that is frightening.” Pierce will go on to write a number of books (including comic books) and periodicals, and host a radio show that will be broadcast in a dozen states. However, he always publicly states that he does not advocate actual violence. [New York Times, 7/5/1995]Second Novel - Ten years later, Pierce will publish a second novel, Hunter, which depicts a lone assassin targeting Jews and African-Americans. Both this book and a reprint of The Turner Diaries will be released by a publishing house affiliated with the National Alliance, the National Vanguard Press (see 1988).

James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978), a self-styled “minister” of the racist, anti-Semitic Christian Identity ideology (see 1960s and After) and a member of the anti-government Posse Comitatus (see 1969), moves back to his childhood state of Wisconsin from his home in Missouri, at the invitation of Donald Minniecheske, who owns 570 acres of land on the shores of the Embarrass River and wants to create a “township” for the Posse that would be run without recognition of federal, state, or local law. Minniecheske wants Wickstrom to be part of the new “township” and what Minniecheske calls the “rejuvenation” of the Posse. He begins by naming himself “national director of counter insurgency” of the organization. After building a bar and moving a few trailers onto the land, Wickstrom and Minniecheske name the property the Constitutional Township of Tigerton Dells. Wickstrom names himself the township’s judge and municipal clerk, and grants Minniecheske a new liquor license (he had lost his previous license two years before). Wickstrom also begins traveling through the Midwestern farm belt, appearing at meeting halls, in basements, and at farm shows. “I knew that something had to be done. I knew that the ranchers and the farmers were being meticulously destroyed by the Jew banking system in America,” Wickstrom will later say. Wickstrom preaches the gospel of anti-tax protest and refusal to pay income taxes (see 1951-1967). He tells his listeners that since taxation and the federal government are both illegitimate, and since they are “sovereign citizens” of the US, they can pay their tax debts with fictitious money orders. Driver’s licenses and ZIP codes are equally illegitimate, Wickstrom says, and tells his listeners they are the victims of a widespread Jewish conspiracy that works through tax collectors, law enforcement officials, judges, and the like to oppress them. Jews and tax collectors should be lynched, Wickstrom advises. Dairy farmer Floyd Cochran will later recall listening to Wickstrom, saying: “In the ‘70s and ‘80s farming went through a drastic change. A lot of people I’d known a good part of my life went out of business. Wickstrom was organizing farmers out West, appearing at farm shows and things of that nature, telling farmers you are losing your place not because of something you did but because the Jews want to take away your farms.” By 1980, Tigerton Dells becomes the center of Posse-led paramilitary training; Wickstrom will later claim that Posse seminars draw thousands of participants who are taught survival skills and covert military operations by high-ranking Vietnam veterans. That same year, Wickstrom runs for the US Senate on the far-right Constitution Party ticket. In 1982, a local radio station begins broadcasting his speeches, and he runs for governor of Wisconsin. He continues preaching, and tells his listeners, falsely, that “his” Posse has over two million members. When North Dakota Posse member Gordon Kahl kills two US Marshals and flees (see February 13, 1983 and After), Wickstrom uses the incident to vault to national prominence and establish himself as a Posse leader (see February 14-21, 1983), moderating his usual virulently racist rhetoric, emphasizing his patriotism and strong Christian beliefs, and presenting himself as a champion of ordinary farmers and working people. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

Ben Klassen, the founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973), mails unsolicited copies of his booklet, “The Brutal Truth About Inflation and Financial Enslavement—The Federal Reserve Board—The Most Gigantic Counterfeiting Ring in the World,” to people and organizations he feels might be interested in his views. The essay alleges that “the Federal Reserve banks are owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by a criminal gang of ‘International Bankers,’” and claims, “The Federal Reserve owns the US government and manipulates it like a puppet, solely for the interests of this avaricious international gang of Jewish jackals, who control the world, its money, and its economy.” The essay concludes, “Now that you understand the Jewish program of piracy, looting, and enslavement by means of the Federal Reserve and money manipulations, now get the rest of the story and the program of the Church of the Creator by reading their White Man’s Bible: Nature’s Eternal Religion” (see 1981). [Anti-Defamation League, 1993]

Young anti-government organizer Robert Jay Mathews, currently living on a rural property in Metaline Falls, Washington, joins the National Alliance, a white-supremacist group founded by author and activist William Pierce (see 1970-1974). Mathews is profoundly affected by Pierce’s book The Turner Diaries (see 1978) and other books, including Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, Louis Beam’s Essays of a Klansman, and William Simpson’s Which Way Western Man? which tells of a plot by Jews to destroy “the White Christian race.” In early 1982, Mathews joins the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, located in the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, and also joins the Aryan Nations. Both the church and the organization advocate the necessity of creating a “white homeland” in northern Idaho. Mathews then founds the White American Bastion, a splinter group designed to bring Christian families to the Northwest. [Kushner, 2003, pp. 222; HistoryLink, 12/6/2006] Mathews will go on to found The Order, one of the most violent anti-government organizations in modern US history (see Late September 1983). He will die during a 1984 standoff with FBI agents (see December 8, 1984).

The Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, owned by organization leader Richard Butler (see Early 1970s), is bombed. The church suffers $80,000 in damages. The bombing is never solved. Butler blames the Jewish Defense League for the attack, and responds by building a two-story guard tower on the property along with posting armed guards and dogs around the perimeter. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), hosts the first Aryan World Congress at the Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. The event attracts many of the area’s racist leaders. Butler begins holding more gatherings in subsequent years and begins appointing state leaders of Aryan Nations chapters. One of the brightest young leaders in Butler’s coterie is Robert Jay Mathews, who will go on to found the violent white supremacist group The Order (see Late September 1983). Other prominent Nations members at the conferences include: Tom Metzger, leader of the White Aryan Resistance; Louis Beam, a former Klansman who will promote the concept of “leaderless resistance” (see February 1992); Don Black, a former Klansman who will create Stormfront, the largest white separatist forum on the Internet; and Kirk Lyons, a well-known lawyer who will represent a number of extremists facing criminal charges. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Christian Identity (see 1960s and After) preacher and Posse Comitatus (see 1969) leader James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978) is charged with two counts of impersonating a public official. Wickstrom had named himself chief judge and municipal clerk of the “Tigerton Dells Township,” a Posse compound on the banks of the Embarrass River (see 1978 - 1983). Though Wickstrom defends himself as a “sovereign citizen” who is not obligated to obey the laws of the federal, state, and local government, prosecutor Douglas Haag counters: “[T]he question is whether or not a man with even marginal intelligence who can read and write the English language believes that he can put a fence around his back yard, set up a separate government, and call himself a public official.… [I]f [Wickstrom] has a sincere belief that he is a public officer within the laws of the state of Wisconsin, I’m the Easter Bunny.” Wickstrom is convicted and sentenced to the maximum of 13 and one-half months in jail. He will be released in 1985 and forbidden from any contact with Posse Comitatus activities for two years afterwards. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004] Wickstrom is also charged with running an illegal guerrilla training camp (see 1984). The Tigerton Dells debacle has a negative effect on the Posse Comitatus (see 1984).

Gordon Kahl, an anti-tax protester, Posse Comitatus member (see 1967 - 1973 and 1975 - 1981), and federal fugitive who killed two US Marshals in a February shootout in North Dakota (see February 13, 1983 and After), quickly gains national prominence as the media begins reporting on the fatal confrontation. Most media reports only identify him as a “tax protester,” failing to mention his Posse Comitatus membership and often leaving out the involvement of his son, Yorie Kahl, and two other Posse members who helped kill the marshals and wound three others. CBS news anchor Dan Rather goes farther than most of his colleagues, describing Kahl as “a radical survivalist, a fanatic, [and] an ultraright-wing tax protester” whom authorities describe as “a killer.” It does not take long for Posse Comitatus leader James Wickstrom (see 1984) to begin contacting the media himself, proudly announcing Kahl’s Posse connections and announcing: “The Posse in Wisconsin is on standby alert. All communications are locked in.” The government has, in pursuing Kahl, “declared war on the people of this country,” Wickstrom tells reporters. He adds that his organization has some three million members, though the FBI estimates its membership at closer to a few thousand; the number is hard to pin down, as many anti-tax protesters (see 1951-1967, December 9, 1968 and After, 1970-1972, 1974, 1976-1978, 1980, and Early 1980s) have at least some affiliation with the loosely organized group. As the FBI and local law enforcement officials mount a nationwide manhunt, Wickstrom, with some success, tries to turn the story away from Kahl’s murder of the two marshals and towards the story of the Posse’s anti-tax beliefs. “What we have here is a gentleman who is now being pursued in North Dakota on a setup to shut his mouth because the American people are waking up by the tens of thousands across this country, realizing that we have been duped by a private central bank,” he declares to a Milwaukee reporter. He makes an appearance on the nationally televised Phil Donahue Show, where he claims that his “heart really goes out to the US Marshals and the children of those marshals and their families.” Asked by Donahue if he would join Kahl’s wife in asking Kahl to turn himself in, Wickstrom changes the subject, arguing that Kahl’s civil rights have been violated and the real issues are farm foreclosures, corrupt courts, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, foreign workers, and Jews. In 2002, author Daniel Levitas will write, “Phil Donahue’s dialogue with Wickstrom was oftentimes inane, and though he clearly didn’t agree with his guest, he gave Wickstrom a tremendous platform to spread his ideas.” Wickstrom will use his media appearances to mount a longshot candidacy for governor of Wisconsin. [Levitas, 2002, pp. 201-204] Four months later, Kahl will die in a bloody standoff with police officers in Arkansas (see March 13 - June 3, 1983).

Robert Jay Mathews, a white supremacist and activist (see 1980-1982), gives a speech at the National Alliance convention in Arlington, Virginia, reporting on his efforts to recruit farmers and ranchers into the “white racialist” movement (see 1969). Mathews receives the only standing ovation of the convention. He also renews his acquaintance with Thomas Martinez, a former Ku Klux Klansman from Philadelphia, and becomes close friends with him. [HistoryLink, 12/6/2006] Mathews will go on to found The Order, one of the most violent anti-government organizations in modern US history (see Late September 1983). He will die during a 1984 standoff with FBI agents (see December 8, 1984).

The logo of ‘The Order.’ [Source: Eye on Hate (.com)]Robert Jay Mathews, a white supremacist and activist (see 1980-1982 and September 1983), invites eight men to his property in Metaline Falls, Washington: neighbor and best friend Kenneth Loft; former Ku Klux Klansman David Edan Lane; Daniel Bauer; Denver Daw Parmenter; Randolph George Duey and Bruce Carroll Pierce of the Aryan Nations; and National Alliance recruits Richard Harold Kemp and William Soderquist. Mathews and his eight guests found a new organization called, variously, “The Order,” “The Silent Brotherhood” or “Bruder Schweigen,” and “The White American Bastion.” The group uses the story depicted in the novel The Turner Diaries as its framework, determining to use violence and crime to destabilize the US government and establish a whites-only society. In the novel, “The Organization” finances its revolution by armed robberies, counterfeiting, and other crimes designed to disrupt the US economy. Mathews decides his group will use the same plan. Mathews is also inspired by real crimes, such as a failed 1981 armored car heist by the Black Liberation Army. [Kushner, 2003, pp. 222-223; HistoryLink, 12/6/2006]

James Wickstrom, the counterinsurgency director of the anti-Semitic, anti-government group Posse Comitatus (see 1969), escapes from federal custody after being convicted of running an illegal guerrilla training camp in the Posse’s “planned community” of Tigerton Dells, Wisconsin. Wickstrom, a former tool salesman who protested the Vietnam War on the grounds that it was being fought for “Jew bankers,” and who has successfully recruited Michigan farmers for his group, promises the Posse’s enemies—primarily federal agents and Jews—“the biggest bloodbath you can imagine” before his capture. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010] Wickstrom is captured and will spend a year in prison; Tigerton Dells is seized and many Posse members arrested (see 1984). In 1990, Wickstrom will be sentenced to over three years in prison for counterfeiting currency and illegally possessing firearms. After his second and final release, he will become a popular speaker at neo-Nazi gatherings, where he will tell listeners that he lives “for the day I can walk down the road and see heads on fence posts.” Wickstrom will become chaplain of the Christian Identity separatist group Aryan Nations, and will go on to broadcast a weekly Internet radio program called “Yahweh’s Truth.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

The cover of the first volume of ‘The Law that Never Was.’ [Source: Radaris (.com) / Amazon (.com)]Two anti-tax protesters, William “Bill” Benson and Martin J. “Red” Beckman, publish a two-volume book, The Law that Never Was, that argues the 16th Amendment, the constitutional amendment giving the federal government the authority to levy income taxes, is null and void (see 1951-1967, 1970-1972, 1976-1978, and Early 1980s). The arguments in the book include the idea that because the amendment was ratified by different states with small differences in capitalization and punctuation, it was never properly ratified, as well as the argument that since Ohio was not yet a state when it ratified the amendment, Ohio’s ratification of the amendment renders it null. The authors include other arguments—the Internal Revenue Code is not “positive law”; the Internal Revenue Service is not a legitimate government agency; wages do not qualify as “taxable income”; “sovereign citizens” are exempt from income tax—all of which will be declared worthless and frivolous by various state and federal courts. The Anti-Defamation League will write that the arguments advanced by Benson and Beckman “are used again and again by tax protesters.… When a tax protest argument fails in court, the response among tax protesters is typically not to conclude that the argument was erroneous but rather to assume that the judge was wrong, corrupt, or deliberately misinterpreting the law.” Benson is a former investigator for the Illinois Internal Revenue Service, while Beckman is a virulent anti-Semite who accuses Jews of worshiping Satan and says the Holocaust was God’s “judgment upon a people who believe Satan is their god.” In 1991, Benson will be convicted of tax fraud and tax evasion, and will be sued by the US government to stop him from promoting an “abusive tax shelter” by selling what he calls a “Reliance Defense Package” while doing business as “Constitutional Research Associates.” In 2007, a federal court will find that his Reliance Defense Package “contained false or fraudulent information concerning tax advice,” and will note that a circuit court “explicitly rejected Benson’s arguments that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified.” Benson’s work will frequently be cited by tax protesters, many of whom will be fined or convicted for relying on his claims. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Tax Protester Dossiers, 11/30/2009; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

Dennis Ryan, 15, helps his father torture and kill a man. Michael Ryan, a partially disabled farmer in Rulo, Nevada, has for three years followed the violent white supremacist teachings of the Posse Comitatus (see 1969) through Posse leader James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978), who in 1982 told him to prepare for Armageddon. After speaking to Wickstrom for the first time in Kansas, Ryan told his son to quit playing football and begin practicing with a rifle. Wickstrom adopted Ryan as something of a protege, and steered some of his supporters towards him, making him a leader in local Posse circles. In 1985, Dennis, on his father’s orders, shoots James Thimm in the face. His father had become angry with Thimm. When Thimm does not die, the elder Ryan chains him inside a hog shed, kicks and beats him, and forces him to have sex with a goat. Dennis, again complying with his father’s orders, shoots off Thimm’s fingers and partially skins him. The elder Ryan sodomizes Thimm with a shovel and finally kicks him to death. The entire procedure takes two weeks. In 2001, Dennis Ryan will tell a reporter: “I don’t hold Wickstrom responsible for the crime I committed. I hold him responsible for getting my dad into it.… Wickstrom didn’t make my dad kill anybody, but he planted the seed. He planted it in my dad and then he helped it grow.” Author Daniel Levitas will agree, telling the reporter, “There could not have been the tragedy in Rulo if there was not a James Wickstrom.” Dennis Ryan wil add: “He was looking for something to believe in. He didn’t like blacks to begin with. I don’t think he was ever a popular person growing up. I think that it was the right time for the wrong thing. He was weak and you don’t let someone indoctrinate you into something like that unless you are weak-minded. He was all screwed up.” Former Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord member Kerry Noble will say of Wickstrom: “[He] is dangerous to the extent of provoking others. He is typical of leaders. They won’t do violent stuff, yet that’s all they’ll preach. They’ll push buttons, but they are extremely cowardly.” Dennis will recall: “Jim Wickstrom was the reason Dad got into this stuff. He’s the one who showed Dad how to talk to Yahweh, the reason we started getting guns and preparing for Armageddon. He was always so amazed at all the weaponry and how well Jim Wickstrom and his followers in Tigerton Dells (see 1978 - 1983) were armed.” After moving from Whiting, Kansas, to a farm in Rulo, Ryan ordered his family to steal farm equipment, livestock, and weapons in the name of Yahweh. Dennis will recall that the crimes were based on Wickstrom’s teachings, saying: “We were supposed to kill all Satan’s people. Dad was supposed to be the King of Israel and I was the Prince. He was supposed to die before the New Jerusalem was brought down from Yahweh, and then I’d be the king. I believed it 110 percent. All the way. Hell, I helped kill a man for it, and I never once questioned it.… Wickstrom wasn’t physically a constant presence in our lives, he wasn’t over all the time at the house or always on the phone with my dad, but he was there in that he was Dad’s teacher. We had all of his fliers and cassettes. Dad would even listen to Wickstrom while he was taking the garbage out.” Dennis will say that by 1985 Ryan had become obsessed with religious fervor and his conviction that Armageddon was imminent. He became more and more violent, focusing much of his rage on Luke Stice, the five-year-old son of follower Rick Stice, whom he savagely abused until March 1985, when he broke Luke’s neck. Rick Stice helped Ryan bury his child. Dennis will serve a 12-year prison sentence for his role in the death of James Thimm. Michael Ryan will be sentenced to death. Dennis, after serving his sentence, starting a family, and becoming a carpenter, will have no further contact with his father. He has little trust in organized religion. He says: “I look at the Bible and it scares me because I know how people twist it and use it for their own benefit. I don’t want some man up there telling me what God expects of me. I was told that before, and I killed someone.… So many people interpret the Bible so many different ways. I mean, take 9/11. That’s their religious beliefs. They’re no different than what my dad did except they actually carried it out. As far as killing thousands of people—that was his goal, too.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

The cover of ‘Hunter.’ [Source: ce399 (.com)]William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), oversees the creation of a publishing firm for the Alliance, National Vanguard Books. It will publish a number of works, most prominently a reprint of The Turner Diaries and Pierce’s second novel, Hunter, which tells the story of a white assassin who kills minorities, particularly interracial couples. He dedicates Hunter to Joseph Paul Franklin, convicted of the sniper murders of two African-American men (see 1980). Pierce will later tell his biographer that he wrote Hunter as a deliberate motivational tool for assassins, saying, “From the beginning with Hunter, I had this idea of how fiction can work as a teaching tool in mind.” In 2002, the Center for New Community will write, “Like The Turner Diaries, the book has inspired several real-life acts of racist terror” (see January 4, 2002 and After). In 1991, National Vanguard will expand into releasing audiotapes, which by December 1992 will spawn a radio show, American Dissident Voices. In 1993, it will begin publishing comic books targeted at children and teenagers. [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978), the Posse Comitatus (see 1969) leader who recently spent over a year in prison for impersonating a public official (see 1983), is again sentenced to 38 months in prison for his role in a plot to print and distribute $100,000 in counterfeit bills for the 1988 Aryan Nations World Congress. The counterfeit bills were to help fund paramilitary activities. By the time Wickstrom is released in 1994, the Posse Comitatus has all but dissolved (see 1984). In 2001, author Daniel Levitas will say: “Wickstrom’s light has been fading ever since the compound at Tigerton Dells shut down (see 1983). Wickstrom’s heyday was in the period from 1978 to 1985. That was his period of peak influence. Since then he’s hopscotched around and been able to gather small groups of people around him, but he’ll never return to his former stature in the movement.” Wickstrom will continue speaking to small groups, selling his speeches through the mail and the Internet, and running an obscure weekly Internet-based radio show, which he will abandon in 2003. He will attempt to take leadership of a splinter faction of the disintegrating Aryan Nations organization (see 2003, 2004, and September 2004 and After). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

A young Louis Beam, dressed in his Ku Klux Klan regalia. [Source: Edit International (.com)]In a number of venues, including “The Seditionist” magazine and an Illinois publication called “The War Eagle: A Voice and Forum for Revolutionary Pan-Aryanism,” white supremacist Louis Beam calls for “leaderless resistance,” or cells of fighters who report to no one. Beam writes that the idea originated in the early 1960s as part of preparations for a Communist takeover of the United States; he has adapted it to the idea of resisting what he calls the threat of “federal tyranny” and the federal government’s “ever increasing persecution and oppression.” Beam writes that the usual “pyramidal” scheme of organization, “with the mass at the bottom and the leader at the top,” is “not only useless, but extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement against state tyranny.… In the pyramid type of organization, an infiltrator can destroy anything which is beneath his level of infiltration and often those above him as well. If the traitor has infiltrated at the top, then the entire organization from the top down is compromised and may be traduced at will.” Beam recommends the independent “cell system” of organization, and cites two examples: the Revolutionary War-era “Sons of Liberty” and the more recent use of “cells” by Communist infiltrators in the US. Beam writes that if the cell system is adopted without the top layer of leadership—leaderless “phantom cells”—this can thwart government efforts to infiltrate and monitor the groups. Every cell must have the same fundamental ideology and agenda, Beam writes, and then can be trusted to operate independently, taking actions that further the cause of the larger group without top-down direction. He concludes: “America is quickly moving into a long dark night of police state tyranny, where the rights now accepted by most as being inalienable will disappear. Let the coming night be filled with a thousand points of resistance. Like the fog which forms when conditions are right and disappears when they are not, so must the resistance to tyranny be.” Beam’s idea will be used by many in the so-called “Patriot Movement.” The “Patriot Movement” is later defined by founder John Wallace and by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a loose confederation of anti-government organizations, groups, and individuals who believe that the US government is illegally infringing on citizens’ liberties. The “Patriot Movement” is largely comprised of right-wing, separatist, and white supremacist organizations, groups, and individuals. [The Seditionist, 2/1992; New York Times, 7/5/1995; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; John Wallace, 2007]

“Racial Loyalty,” the monthly newsletter published by the racist Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), reprints an essay by David Lane on “the Christian Right-wing American Patriots, C.R.A.P. (since that is what they do to [sic] the future of all White children).” Lane is a member of the far-right terrorist group The Order (see Late September 1983) and is serving a 40-year racketeering sentence, as well as a 150-year term for civil rights violation in connection with the 1984 murder of radio talk show host Alan Berg (see June 18, 1984 and After). Many far-right organizations who espouse their own versions of Christianity (see 1960s and After), including the Ku Klux Klan, oppose the COTC’s rejection of Christianity. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993]

An image of a fraudulent ‘Freeman check’ signed by LeRoy Schweitzer. [Source: Anti-Defamation League]During this time period, over a dozen Montana anti-government tax resisters—the kernel of what will become the “Montana Freemen” movement (see 1983-1995)—establish themselves, creating what they term “common law courts” in Garfield and Musselshell Counties, and mounting a massive bank fraud scheme. [Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]Beliefs - According to a Washington Post article, the Freemen espouse a number of beliefs that directly contradict federal, state, and local laws. These are: All forms of organized government are illegitimate and have no right to perform duties routinely assigned to governments, from collecting taxes to requiring automobile licenses. Thusly, the Freemen can perform a multitude of actions, such as defying foreclosures, issuing arrest warrants, and even putting government officials on “trial.” They can also act as their own central banks and defraud the government, financial institutions, and area merchants. Racist 'Christian Identity' Ideology - According to the Montana Human Rights Network and local citizens, most of the Freemen espouse some form of “Christian Identity” religious ideology, which claims that whites are inherently superior to other “inferior” races (see 1960s and After); they also hold radical anti-government views. [Washington Post, 4/1996; Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] The Anti-Defamation League traces the roots of the Freemen ideology to the the Posse Comitatus movement (see 1969). [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] They call themselves “Freemen” because, in their view, white Christian males have special “Freemen” citizenship status, while non-whites, non-Christians, and women have second class status or worse. Freemen are above government prosecution and taxation. As US currency has no intrinsic value, any loans taken by Freemen need not be repaid. The US government is run by Jews and therefore has no legitimacy. “Common law” is the rule of the land. [New York Times, 6/15/1996] The Reverend Jerry Walters of Roundup, Montana, will later characterize the Freemen’s beliefs as a “bizarre distortion of the Christianity taught in most churches on Sundays.” (Rodney Skurdal will file a $100 billion lien against Walters after Walters refuses to alter his sermons to reflect Skurdal’s Christian Identity beliefs.) The Post will observe: “American history is littered with examples of how hard economic times produce hard-edged political splinter groups, but the Freemen of Montana are a particularly virulent strain. Their philosophy, a hodgepodge drawn from the Old Testament, the Magna Carta, the anti-tax Posse Comitatus of the 1980s, and a highly selective reading of the Constitution, is laced with racism and talk of a Jewish conspiracy, and puts them at the extreme of the Christian patriot movement.” Steven Gardner of the Coalition for Human Dignity will say: “The Freemen have, in effect, appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner. They are trying to form their own shadow government for a white Christian republic.” [Washington Post, 4/1996; Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] “What’s driving them is their biblical and theological agenda,” Walters will say. “Their anti-government conspiracy theories, their anti-tax stance—they’re looking at these things through the lens of Christian Identity.” [Washington Post, 4/9/1996]Fraudulent Liens - LeRoy Schweitzer and the others concoct a scheme to generate money by filing phony liens against various Montana property owners, or the Montana or US government. The liens have no value; however, once they are created, it takes time for bank computers to recognize them as invalid. During that “window” of time, the liens can be used to generate money transfers from unsuspecting banks. The Freemen file the liens and deposit fake money orders at other banks to be drawn upon the bank listing the lien. The money orders are usually signed by Schweitzer, though Skurdal, Daniel Petersen, and William Stanton (see October 17, 1994) also sign them on occasion. The money orders look quite official, though sometimes they deliberately spell the words “United States” with a lowercase “u.” The Freemen also issue bogus checks labeled “Certified Bankers Check—Controller Warrant,” instead of a bank name, along with account and lien numbers. Many checks are drawn against a non-existent account in a Butte, Montana, branch of the Norwest Bank. The checks state that they are also redeemable at the Office of the US Postmaster. The scheme is, on the whole, quite profitable. The Freemen also sell the money orders, advertising them to their fellow citizens as a quick means of getting out of debt. One distributor explains on a Web site: “LeRoy Schweitzer does have their [sic] own monetary system. When you attend their course on location, they will issue you CHECKS times two (biblical) to pay off all IRS debts and all loans to banks for no charge. They are having success in this area, but it is hard fight [sic].” One Omaha, Nebraska, county treasurer will later explain, “People see these and, if you’re a very unsuspecting person, they really do look authentic.” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] Schweitzer, Skurdal, and Petersen are influenced by Roy Schwasinger, described by federal authorities as a right-wing con artist and head of the Colorado extremist group “We the People.” Schwasinger originated the financial schemes that the Freemen run. [New York Times, 6/15/1996]Appointing Themselves as Legal Officials - The Freemen appoint themselves “justices,” issue “arrest warrants,” and flood local courts and counties with what the Billings Gazette will term “bogus documents.” One of the documents, written by the three Freemen leaders, Skurdal, Schweitzer, and Petersen, is interpreted by local law enforcement officials as a threat. It states: “We the Honorable justices, will not hesitate to use our Lawful force by whatever means necessary to fully support, protect, guarantee, and defend our (common) Law… and… Right of self governing as a free sovereign and independent state.” District Court Judge Peter Rapkoch calls the documents “a bucket of snakes.” In July 1994, one of the Freemen, Skurdal, is prohibited by court order from filing or recording any “frivolous” document with any Montana county clerk of court, clerk and recorder, or the secretary of state (see 1994); Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean A. Turnage calls Skurdal’s filings “not only nonsensical but meritless, frivolous, vexatious, and wasteful of the limited time and resources of this court, of the clerk of this court, and of the various public officials and counsel that are forced to deal with and respond to Mr. Skurdal’s abuse.” Garfield County prosecutor Nick Murnion files misdemeanor charges of impersonating public officials against 13 residents and a felony charge of solicitation of kidnapping against Ralph Clark for a $1 million bounty posted around the county for court officers, the sheriff, and Murnion. Garfield County Sheriff Charles Phipps organizes a posse of about 90 local residents to come to the aid of his outmanned, outgunned three-person department (see January 1994). Murnion eventually files felony criminal syndicalism charges against Freemen members. US Attorney Sherry Matteucci works with local and state officials to share information on anti-government activities. “I think their purpose is to intimidate people and to cause chaos in governmental operations,” she says. [Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Chicago Tribune, 4/19/1996; Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]

Geremy von Rineman and his girlfriend Jill Scarborough, members of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and July 26, 1993), are arrested for plotting to bomb Los Angeles’s largest black church. Six others who are affiliated with the group are also arrested. The eight are accused of plotting to instigate a racial war by bombing the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a major black religious institution in South Central Los Angeles, and assassinating Rodney King, the victim of a videotaped beating by white police officers. The King murder was planned for August 4, the sentencing date for two policemen convicted of federal civil rights violations in connection with the beating. The arrests are timed to stop a letter-bombing plot targeting an Orange County rabbi. The indictment also states that other civil rights figures are targeted for attack, including: leaders of the NAACP and the National Urban League; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; the Reverend Al Sharpton; rap music stars Eazy-E and members of the group Public Enemy; as well as unspecified “Jewish leaders.” The police seize pipe bombs and machine guns, racist paraphernelia including Confederate and Nazi flags, and a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler. Christopher David Fisher is charged with conspiracy to bomb the church. Von Rineman, Scarborough, Josh Lee, Chris Nadal, and Doris Nadal are charged with a variety of weapons offenses. Two unidentified juveniles are charged with unspecified crimes, though Time magazine will later claim that one of the juveniles had been charged with a pipe-bomb attack against a “half Asian and half Mexican” member of the “Spur Posse,” a gang of Lakewood, California, teenagers who awarded points among themselves for sexual conquests. Fisher, a grade school teacher, is the head of a small “skinhead” gang called the Fourth Reich Skins. Rineman is not only a member of COTC, he is a member of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), as is Scarborough. [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Rodney Skurdal, a leader of the “Montana Freemen” movement (see 1993-1994), files a 20-page treatise with a Montana court that claims the Freemen are the descendents of the true Anglo-Saxon “chosen people,” and that the land occupied by the United States was promised to them by God. Skurdal, who signs the document “the honorable Justice Rodney O. Skurdal,” writes: “In reading the Bible, one must understand that there are ‘two seed lines’ within Genesis. It is the colored people, and the Jews, who are the descendants of Cain… when We move into a new land, We are to kill the inhabitants of all the other races… nor are We to allow the other races to rule over us.” Skurdal writes extensively of the Freemen’s opposition to governmental rule of any sort, justifying it by referencing his interpretation of Biblical teachings: “We, Israel, must obey God only; not man-made laws by our purported Congress and state legislators and/or the United Nations, under the purported ‘new world order’ i.e., ‘Satan’s laws.’” Skurdal adds that taxes, marriage licenses, driver’s licenses, insurance, electrical inspections, and building permits are all instruments of Satan’s law. He writes that the “land of milk and honey” bequeathed by God to whites is actually the territory now considered the United States, and notes, “If we the white race are God’s chosen people… why are we paying taxes on ‘His land.’” Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University professor and expert on radical Christian ideologies, will call Skurdal’s treatise “pure Christian Identity” (see 1960s and After). This theological claim to land, Barkun will say, goes further than a lot of other Identity adherents do. “What’s unusual here is that this isn’t simply a kind of collective granting of a piece of soil by God to his people, but it’s a kind of literal granting of ownership and control: Because we are his people and this is his land, no one can tell us what to do with it,” Barkun will observe. [Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Chicago Tribune, 4/19/1996] Skurdal has come to the notice of Montana legal authorities before. At one point he had legal actions going simultaneously in every one of Montana’s 56 counties. He has succeeded in getting to the Montana Supreme Court three times over traffic tickets. When the state judiciary ruled that Skurdal’s legal filings were frivolous and could not be accepted without being signed by a lawyer, Skurdal merely mailed his writs and documents to out-of-state agencies, which, assuming the documents were misdelivered, returned them to Montana authorities, where they were filed. After four years of dealing with Skurdal’s legal court cases, Musselshell County Attorney Vicki Knudsen quit her job. One of Skurdal’s filings was a “Citizens Declaration of War” which claimed foreign agents were surreptitiously infesting “the country of Montana.” Another accused county officials of attempting to help institute a New World Order (see September 11, 1990). “Once a court accepts one of these asinine Freemen things,” Knudsen later says, “it’s in the system. Everybody named in it becomes involved [and] has to respond. It’s not funny. It’s not romantic. It’s scary.” Knudsen is referring to the threats issued by Skurdal and his fellow Freemen towards herself and other county officials over their filings. [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996]

Don Black, working on the Stormfront.org Web site. [Source: New Times / David Abel]Don Black, the owner of the overtly racist, “white nationalist” Web site Stormfront.org (see March 1995), gives an interview to a reporter from the progressive New Times. Black later posts the interview on his site, with a mocking introduction that calls the report full of “nasty invective” and “arguably the most malicious article I’ve ever had written about me since they started coming 30 years ago.” Black tells the reporter: “We see the breakup [of the United States] coming in about 20 years—it’s a natural progression of events. The Internet is a means of planting seeds for the future. There are a lot of middle-class people who feel disaffected—and in Stormfront they can find what they can’t in the mass media. It’s about building a community and attracting hard-core supporters. We don’t use the ‘n_gger, n_gger’ type of approaches. We don’t want to present the Jerry Springer or Geraldo Rivera image of rabid racists [referring to two confrontational talk show hosts whose guests routinely scream invective at one another]. There are a lot of people who want to agree with us. They just don’t want to be associated with that.” Black explains why he and his fellow white supremacists do not support the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, saying: “I’m not into Martin Luther King’s birthday, of course. It’s an example of a government that no longer represents the interest of the majority of its people. One that no longer represents the heritage of this country. But the minority liberal, multcultural orthodoxy in this country has determined him to be a national hero. And while most Americans opposed the holiday—white Americans, of course—they now have to accept it, like they have accepted everything imposed on them.” Of his West Palm Beach, Florida, neighborhood, Black says he is uncomfortable with the number of Latinos that live there: “It bothers me this area is more Guatemalan than American. It bothers me to wait in line at Publix [a local grocery store] for a Guatemalan to get out his food stamps. I don’t want to pay taxes for them. It’s too much like New York—it’s the front lines of the third world invasion.” He tells the reporter that he doesn’t hate people of other races, he just thinks they should not live in the US. Black works primarily as a Web designer, making commercial sites for local businesses and a few political clients around the country, and doing pro bono work for a number of other white supremacist organizations such as Aryan Nations, The Truth at Last Newspaper, the Church of the Creator’s Web site (COTC—see July-December 1995), a Ku Klux Klan history site, and an Aryan Dating Page. His wife also works to support the family. The majority of Black’s worktime goes into maintaining Stormfront. The latest addition to the site, a discussion forum, requires constant monitoring, he says, both to purge harshly critical comments from critics and to delete posts that advocate violence, give bomb-making instructions, and the like. He also spends a great deal of time defending the site from “cyber attacks,” saying that outside sources relentlessly bombard the servers with denial-of-service (DOS) attacks, “ping floods,” “email bombs,” and other attempts to crash the Stormfront servers and drive the site offline. He plans on adding a live call-in streaming-audio broadcast soon. The site features links to sites that deny the Holocaust, propound “scientifically” based racism, display graphic images of Nazi and SS emblems and paraphernelia, and a plethora of racist and anti-Semitic essays and documents. Michael Winograd of the Anti-Defamation League says of Black: “He is showing the way for Klansmen, neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and other haters who now utilize the World Wide Web to spread their propaganda and seek to attract new members. [Black] is a troubling character precisely because he is relatively articulate and intelligent and is not the knuckle-scraping neanderthal one might expect.” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, says: “The lunatic fringe has embraced this technology with a sophistication and a veracity that is frightening.… What started as a trickle has now evolved into an incredible deluge. In the last year alone, we’ve seen a 300 percent increase in the number of these pages put up on the World Wide Web.… We should be concerned about tomorrow’s Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) emerging and saying, ‘Well this turns me on,’ or ‘I’m really angry about this too.’” Black’s site is at the forefront of this movement. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says of Black: “Don is more than a very good friend, he is one of the leading individuals in the white-rights movement. He’s matured over time—like we all do with age—into a very calm and stoic individual. He has always been a dedicated individual that’s self-sacrificing.” [New Times, 2/19/1998]

Richard Wayne Snell, a right-wing extremist who helped concoct plans to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1983 (see 1983), is executed in prison some 12 hours after Timothy McVeigh detonates a fertilizer bomb outside that same building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Snell is affiliated with the far-right groups Aryan Nations (see Late 1987 - April 8, 1998) and the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, and has connections to the now-defunct violently extremist group The Order. Snell was convicted of two murders: the 1983 robbery and murder of Texarkana pawnbroker William Stumpp (whom Snell wrongly believed was Jewish), and the shooting death of a black state trooper, Louis Bryant, who in 1984 pulled Snell over for a traffic violation near De Queen, Arkansas; Snell shot Bryant as he approached his vehicle, then shot him to death as he lay on the ground. (In his trial, Snell argued that he killed Bryant in self-defense.) He fled the scene of Bryant’s murder and was chased to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, where he was wounded and subdued by officers. In his car, those officers found the gun Snell used to murder Stumpp. Snell now terms himself a “prisoner of war.” Right-wing paramilitary groups have protested his execution, calling him a “patriot,” and term the federal government “the Beast.” Snell, who has published a periodic white supremacist newsletter, “The Seekers,” was the focus of a March 1995 issue of another organization’s newsletter, the Montana Militia, which reminded its readers that Snell’s execution was set for April 19, stating: “If this date does not ring a bell for you then maybe this will jog your memory. 1. April 19, 1775: Lexington burned; 2. April 19, 1943: Warsaw burned; 3. April 19, 1992: The fed’s attempted to raid Randy Weaver, but had their plans thwarted when concerned citizens arrived on the scene with supplies for the Weaver family totally unaware of what was to take place (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992); 4. April 19, 1993: The Branch Davidians burned (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After); 5. April 19, 1995: Richard Snell will be executed—unless we act now!!!” The Montana Militia’s plan of action was to flood the Arkansas governor’s office with letters protesting Snell’s execution. Snell’s jailers later say that for the last four days, Snell has predicted something “big” would happen on the day of his execution (see (April 1) - April 18, 1995). On his last day, Snell is allowed a visit by Elohim City founder Robert Millar (see 1973 and After), his “spiritual advisor,” where they watch the events of the Oklahoma City bombing unfold on television. Snell reportedly chuckles over the bombing, though Millar will say Snell is “appalled” by the reports. Snell’s last words are a threat directed to Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker (D-AR), as he is being strapped to a gurney for execution by lethal injection. “Governor Tucker, look over your shoulder,” Snell says. “Justice is coming. I wouldn’t trade places with you or any of your cronies. Hail the victory. I am at peace.” McVeigh will not mention Snell, and there is no evidence linking Snell or his colleagues to the Oklahoma City bombing. [New York Times, 5/20/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 161-162; Time, 2/24/1997; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002] Snell’s widow will later say she has no reason to believe her husband had anything to do with the bombing. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 271] Millar brings Snell’s body back to Elohim City for internment. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 270]

British National Party logo. [Source: The Huntsman (.com)]William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), travels to London to address the white nationalist British National Party (BNP). Pierce and BNP leader John Tyndall have a long friendship and alliance. Some 150 neo-Nazis attend the meeting and begin chanting, “Free the Order!” apparently in reference to the members of the violent American white supremacist group The Order (see Late September 1983 and September 9 - December 30, 1985). After this visit, Pierce is officially banned from England. [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Norm Olson. Olson is wearing an ‘Alaska Citizens’ Militia’ shoulder patch as part of his pseudo-military garb. [Source: Political Carnival]Former Michigan Militia members Norm Olson and Ray Southwell concoct the idea of holding a “Third Continental Congress” to redress the problems they see plaguing the nation—problems they believe stem primarily from a conspiracy of Jews, liberals, and minorities to repress white Christians. Olson and Southwell were thrown out of the Michigan Militia after Olson told media representatives that the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was engineered by the Japanese government in retaliation for the CIA’s supposed involvement in the Tokyo subway gas attack. Southwell envisions the Third Continental Congress, or TCC, to operate as a directing body for all the nation’s various militia groups, working together under the TCC rubric to “reestablish justice in America for all the people, whatever color they may be, or whatever faith system they may observe.” Southwell calls the envisioned dominance of the TCC “God’s will.” Olson says: “My goal is not to plan a revolution, for revolution will come. My goal is not to point fingers, lay blame, or find fault, for few doubt the crimes of the present de facto government. My goal is not to cast support to politicians or to shore up the broken machine that the federal government has become. Rather, my goal is to establish the Republican Provisional Government.” The first official TCC meeting, held in October 1996 in a Kansas City, Missouri, Holiday Inn, only attracts about a dozen delegates due to bad weather, though a few more arrive as the meeting wears on. Attendees include Sarah Lowe, whose husband currently heads the white separatist “Republic of Texas,” and Texas conspiracist James Vallaster. Southwell issues a manifesto calling for a Continental Defense Force, a repackaging of his original Third Continental Congress idea. The next meeting of the TCC occurs in January 1997 in Independence, Missouri, with nothing concrete being determined. Some TCC delegates, impatient with the inaction, decide among themselves to take some sort of decisive action. Several delegates, including Ronald Griesacker (a corrections officer, a well-known figure among militias, and a former Republic of Texas member), Kevin and Terry Hobeck (owners of an Ohio trucking firm), and Dennis and Ardith Fick, decide to form their own Continental Congress, which reportedly meets in Silver Lake, Indiana, in February 1997. One of this splinter group’s first members is Bradley Glover (see October 1995 and After), a Kansas militia member looking for extremist groups with an eye to violence. Other members include Thomas and Kimberly Newman, Michael Dorsett (a tax dodger and “common law” advocate), Merlon “Butch” Lingenfelter Jr. (a Wisconsin dairy farmer whose family believes a vast Jewish conspiracy runs most of Western civilization—see 1986), and, unbeknownst to the other members, several undercover officers of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who were at the January 1997 TCC meeting and were concerned about the radical statements of some of the splinter group’s members. In April 1997, the splinter members meet in Towanda, Kansas. Glover and Dorsett make increasingly fiery statements, impelling some of the other members to leave. The focus of the meeting turns to the idea of foreign, United Nations-led troops being housed at US military bases, presumably to help the US government crush the “patriot” militia movement and impose martial law. Later that year, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League will write: “Allegations of such troops had been made so often and with such confidence in the patriot community that their presence was taken for granted by many patriots. Radio broadcaster Mark Koernke regularly spoke of hundreds of thousands of UN soldiers hiding in the United States, at military installations, in the national parks, and elsewhere. Indeed, the New World Order (see September 11, 1990) hardly seemed to bother with the effort of hiding them any longer.” The members that remain decide to take action. They determine to develop an arsenal of weapons and military equipment with which to attack government installations that are presumed to house foreign troops. They will hide in safe locations. The Hobecks sell their trucking firm to provide cash for the group, and travel to Colorado to establish a “base” at the Thirty Mile Resort in the Rio Grande National Forest. Others stage reconnaissance missions on military bases, including Holloman Air Force Base at Alamagordo, New Mexico. They station guards during the April and May 1997 meetings in Towanda, and even arm their children, who help patrol Glover’s farm. In June, Glover moves into Dorsett’s home in Arlington, Texas, in preparation for a strike on Fort Hood (see July 4-11, 1997). [Mark Pitcavage, 1997]

Charles Barbee, Robert Berry, and Jay Merrell are charged with robbing and bombing banks, a newspaper office, and a Planned Parenthood clinic in the Spokane, Washington, area. The three are self-described “Phineas Priests,” members of the Christian Identity movement (see 1960s and After and 1990) who claim to have been called by God to launch violent attacks. The three will be convicted and sentenced to life in prison. A fourth “priest,” Brian Ratigan, will be arrested separately and sentenced to 55 years in jail. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

A package containing a petri dish mislabeled “anthracks” is received at the B’nai B’rith headquarters in Washington, DC. The choice of B’nai B’rith may be meant to suggest Arab terrorists, because the building had once been the target of an assault by Muslim gunmen. The letter is signed, “The Counter Holocaust Lobbyists of Hillel,” which is similar wording to a known Holocaust denier. The dish does not contain anthrax but does contain bacillus cereus, a very close, non-toxic cousin of anthrax used by the US Defense Department. There are similarities to the later real anthrax attacks (see October 5-November 21, 2001), such as misspelled words—“penacilin,” in the case of the post-9/11 attacks. In July 2002, B’nai B’rith will say the FBI still has not asked it about this hoax anthrax attack. [New York Times, 8/13/2002; Vanity Fair, 9/15/2003]

Entrance to Fort Hood, Texas. [Source: New York Times]Fort Hood, Texas, preparing for the annual “Freedom Fest” Fourth of July celebration, readies itself for a large crowd of local civilians planning to spend the day enjoying fireworks, marathons, concessions, military bands, carnival rides, and community activities. However, anti-government activists Bradley Glover and Michael Dorsett are captured by FBI and Missouri state police officers in Missouri before they can turn the festival into a massacre. Glover and Dorsett have become convinced that the United Nations is housing Communist Chinese troops at the military base, in conjuction with a “New World Order” conspiracy to invade and occupy the United States (see September 11, 1990). Glover, Dorsett, and others—all “splinter” members of an organization calling itself the “Third Continental Congress” (TCC—see Summer 1996 - June 1997)—are planning a multi-pronged attack on the Army base. Soon after, five others are arrested in conjunction with the plot. History of the Fort Hood Plot - Glover and other TCC members believe that the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was a plot by federal agencies to gin up an excuse to persecute “patriot” organizations. Glover told British reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing that “it’s only a matter of time now before the shooting war begins.” He believed that the bombing would be followed by heavy-handed anti-terrrorism legislation that would see federal agencies attempt to violently eradicate militia groups, and in turn, those groups would violently resist. “If this thing goes down,” Glover predicted in May 1995, “there’s going to be an extremely large number of US military that’s coming to our side with their weapons. They’ll turn like a dog on a cat.” He believed the militias would easily defeat the government forces—“We can whip those guys. We can take out the so-called ninja wanna-bes. We’ll beat ‘em quick”—but worries that President Clinton will turn to the Chinese forces he supposedly has housed throughout the United States: “That’s what worries us,” Glover said. “Then we’re gonna be fighting big time.” Glover became known to federal authorities after his frequent interviews with reporters after the Oklahoma City bombing, and claims to lead groups such as the Southern Kansas Regional Militia and the First Kansas Mechanized Infantry. (In his “real” life, Glover is a part-time computer consultant.) When the expected crackdown failed to materialize, Glover became a national council member of a national “umbrella” militia group called the Tri-States Militia (see October 1995 and After) and then began associating with ever-more violent anti-government extremists. Glover, Dorsett, and a small group of extremists devise an extensive plan to strike at a number of government facilities and military bases, beginning with Fort Hood. Arrests - But federal and state authorities are well aware of their plans. At 6:15 a.m. on the morning of July 4, FBI agents arrest Glover and Dorsett in their tents in the Colorado Bend State Park. The two have an arsenal with them: two rifles, five pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests, a smoke grenade, a homemade silencer, explosive material, a night vision scope, and other items. “Their explosives would have been more damaging to the personnel at Fort Hood than to the physical installation,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Richard Coffey later tells a Texas newspaper reporter. “They did not have the same philosophy as the people in Oklahoma City. They were not looking for a huge explosion to make their point.” Instead, they planned small, repeated explosions. Glover, charged only with weapons violations, posts bail and flees to Wisconsin, where he is quickly arrested again after another weapons charge is added to the original indictment. Dorsett is held on an outstanding federal passport violation. Fellow plotter Merlon “Butch” Lingfelter is later arrested in Wisconsin on July 10, while looking for Glover; he surrenders his two machine guns and two pipe bombs, but says, “I’m not trying to be a noble knight in this, but it’s time somebody somewhere does something.” Despite his defiance, Lingenfelter tells a reporter that the meetings held by Glover were merely social outings. Kevin and Terry Hobeck are arrested on July 10 in Colorado after giving two illegal automatic weapons to undercover police officers; Thomas and Kimberly Newman are arrested on July 11 in Kansas after Thomas Newman gives the same undercover officers a sack full of pipe bombs. Suicide Mission? - One law enforcement official believes that the group may have intended to die in the planned Fort Hood attack. “I think you have to have a warped sense of reality to think you can pull of a mission like that,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain James Keathley later tells a Denver reporter. “It sounds like a suicide mission to me. I don’t know if they could have pulled this off.” [Mark Pitcavage, 1997; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]Sentences - Glover will draw a seven-year prison sentence, and the others lesser terms. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

Don Black, the white supremacist who runs the racist Web site Stormfront.org (see March 1995), appears on ABC News’s Nightline, along with host Ted Koppel and First Amendment advocate Floyd Abrams, a prominent lawyer. Black is introduced as “a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.” During the interview, Black strives to give the appearance of a moderate, thoughtful person who does not espouse racial hatred, and explains that through Stormfront, he has “recruited people” via the Internet whom he “otherwise wouldn’t have reached.” He also says that sites such as Stormfront “provide those people who are attracted to our ideas with a forum to talk to each other and to form a virtual community.” Black says his views are entirely reasonable: “You may consider my views dangerous, but so were those of the Founding Fathers, who were considered dangerous. In fact, their views… weren’t that much different from my own.… Fifty, 60, 70 years ago, what I’m saying was part of the mainstream.” In the days after the interview, Black will claim a 400 percent increase in visitors to his site. [Anti-Defamation League, 1998]

Four armed Florida members of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), all under 25, rob a Broward County, Florida, video store, planning to use the proceeds for the group. Three of them will later plead guilty to federal conspiracy charges related to the robbery. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999] According to the indictment, the four chose the target “because the defendants… believed that media outlets were controlled by ‘Jews,’ and that it was permissible to steal from the ‘Jews.’” The WCOTC members reportedly pattern the robbery after a similar incident in William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries (see 1978). They discussed sending the proceeds from the robbery to WCOTC’s Illinois headquarters. Two of the criminals, Donald Hansard and Raymond Leone, have already been convicted of charges stemming from the beating of a black man and his son (see August 1997). All four defendants will plead guilty. Dawn Witherspoon receives 13 months in prison; Angela King receives six years in prison; Hansard receives four and one-half years; and Leone receives over eight years in prison. [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999]

Matthew Hale, the leader of the overtly racist World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), graduates from law school and passes the Illinois bar exam. However, the Illinois State Bar Association rejects Hale’s application to practice law because of his “character and fitness.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999] The commissioners deny Hale’s application because of his published rhetoric, which they find in “absolute contradiction” to the required conduct of lawyers. A report issued by the Committee on Character and Fitness quotes racial slurs from the WCOTC Web site as evidence of Hale’s “bad character.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] In the January 1999 issue of WCOTC’s monthly newsletter “The Struggle,” Hale implores his fellow “Creators” to mobilize themselves in the event that his appeal of the ruling is denied, writing: “I call upon all White Racial Loyalists, whether inside or outside of the Church, to stand united in their opposition to this further attempt to disempower our Race in the court of law. While the time has not yet come for protests and other public shows of support for this struggle, the time is now to galvanize the entire White Racial Loyalist community in the event that the Hearing Board also declines my certification. I need all of you to spread news of what is happening throughout our community. For now, these events must only serve to motivate all of us even further to do our utmost to bring about the destruction of the Jewish system.” [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999]

William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), says on the Alliance’s weekly radio broadcast American Dissident Voices (ADV): “We are letting the Mexicans and blacks wreck our country today not because the blacks or the Mexicans are able to brainwash us but because the Jews are. Mexicans are not a menace to us because they breed fast and carry switchblades. Blacks are not a menace because there are a lot of them and they have a tendency toward violence. We know how to deal with people who breed fast and carry switchblades. We know how to deal with violent blacks, no matter how many of them there are. Cleaning up America might be a bit messy, but there’s absolutely no question about our ability to do it, if we had the will to do it.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Indiana University (IU) sophomore Benjamin “August” Smith gives a fiery interview to a student reporter that details his hatred of African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, homosexuals, and even many Christians. Smith describes himself as a member of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), a self-described “race religion” that espouses racism and totalitarianism. [Bloomington Independent, 8/27/1998] (Smith is the group’s “Creator of the Year” for 1998.) [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The church has approximately three members in the Bloomington, Indiana, area. Smith explains his hatred: “White people are best and they deserve the best. We don’t believe all races are equal. We see all inferior races breeding and the number of whites is shrinking. The mud people (see 1960s and After) will turn this world into a cesspool.” Until IU officials stopped him, Smith would paper the campus with fliers three or four times a week, earning him the sobriquet “the flier guy.” A typical flier reads: “If we do nothing, we will condemn our children to live in an Alien Nation where there is no place to escape these non-White invaders. There is nothing wrong with wanting America to remain a racially and culturally European nation.” In the interview, Smith says, “We want to show people that liberals like [President] Clinton are destroying the racial basis of this country.” Smith is as blunt about his church’s position on democracy, saying: “We’re not a big fan of democracy. We believe in totalitarianism.” If the church succeeds in achieving its goals, it will, Smith says, divide the US into portions, retaining much of it for its members. “We want the Midwest. It has the most fertile land and is the best basis for a new nation,” Smith says. Minorities will not be welcome. “Send the blacks back to Africa, the Asians back to Asia,” Smith says. “They probably won’t be very happy about it but they’ll probably end up wanting to leave.” Smith says mainstream Christianity is a huge impediment to his church’s aims. “It’s not blacks and Jews, but Christianity is our biggest obstacle. It caters to the weakness of man and humble him.” The church has its own Bible, Nature’s Eternal Religion. Smith became a white supremacist after entering college. “I looked through Aryan stuff and realized historically nations function best when there’s one race. Otherwise it’s a power struggle,” he recalls. “I saw the influx of taxpayers paying for minorities. This country was founded for and by whites and that’s when I decided I had to become an activist.” Smith has lost most of his old friends, and now calls them “race traitors and non-believers,” and though he still speaks to his parents, the relationship is strained. Through its Web site, the church claims it can come to power legally and non-violently, but, the site says, if the government tries “to restrict our legal means then we have no recourse but to resort to terrorism and violence.” Smith claims he has received death threats over his activism, but says he intends to increase his recruitment efforts in and around Bloomington and nearby Indianapolis. “Indy’s a big target for us,” he explains. “There are a lot more open minds. This community is la-la land.” [Bloomington Independent, 8/27/1998] Less than a year after the interview, Smith will go on a killing rampage throughout central Indiana before killing himself (see July 2-4, 1999).

William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), writes in the Alliance’s monthly Bulletin: “People who are living comfortably now will resist doing anything to jeopardize their situations. Cowards will remain cowards. But a growing minority of serious, moral people will admit finally, at least to themselves, that we have tolerated the Jews for far too long and that revolution is the correct course for patriots.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Three separate instances of arson committed against synagogues are registered in Sacramento, California. Authorities believe the arsons may have been carried out by members of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), in part because of WCOTC leaflets found in one of the synagogue’s parking lots during a Holocaust Memorial Day service in April 1999. [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Buford Furrow. [Source: Eye on Hate (.com)]Buford O’Neal Furrow, a security guard and member of the white supremacist Aryan Nations organization (see Early 1970s), attacks a day care center at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles. Apparently to avoid capture, Furrow leaves his van behind and hijacks a car to drive to the center. Upon entering, he opens fire with an Uzi submachine gun, wounding three children, a counselor, and a receptionist. Investigators will determine that Furrow fires 70 shots. Furrow flees the scene and shortly thereafter encounters letter carrier Joseph Ileto, a Filipini-American. Furrow approaches Ileto and asks him if he can post a letter for him. As Ileto reaches for the piece of mail, Furrow pulls a Glock 9mm pistol and shoots him twice. Ileto attempts to get away, but Furrow pumps seven more bullets into his back. Ileto dies at the scene. Furrow will surrender the next day in Las Vegas, where he has fled the manhunt by state and local officials. He later tells investigators that the shootings are a “wake-up call” to Jews and white supremacist groups, and that he considered Ileto a good target because he was non-white and worked for the government. Police find a book in Furrow’s van extolling the virtues of the “Christian Identity” movement (see 1960s and After). Some will speculate that Furrow was acting as a “Phineas Priest” (see [1990), Christian Identity members who believe God has called them to carry out violent attacks. The book details how to become a “Phineas Priest,” and gives examples of successful actions, including the murder of radio show host Alan Berg (see June 18, 1984 and After). To avoid the death penalty, Furrow will plead guilty and be sentenced to two life sentences without parole, plus 110 years in prison and $690,294 in restitution. The judge will tell him, “Your actions were a reminder that bigotry is alive.” Referring to the support the center victims receive after the shootings, the judge concludes, “If you’ve sent a message, it is that even the most violent crimes can strengthen a community.” [CNN, 1/24/2001; Eye on Hate, 2003; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2010] Investigators will later learn that Furrow may be mentally unstable, and that he was frequently in short-term state psychiatric facilities, where he often expressed his desire to maim and kill. To questions that Furrow should have been involuntarily committed before the community center shootings, psychiatry professor Renee Binder will say: “What does society do with these people? Most people would say that being a racist with violent fantasies is not against the law. Racism is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.” And Seattle official Ron Sims says: “The problem I have is that people are trying to build a case that this killing was done because the man was insane. What he did was cowardly, repulsive, and a very irrational act. But mental illness was not the cause. Hatred was. This guy came out of a culture of hatred.” [New York Times, 8/14/1999]

Around 10,000 people attend the “Center for Preparedness Expo” in Denver to prepare for the imminent “Y2K” collapse of society warned of by many white separatists and “Patriot” movement members (see October 20, 1999 and February 4, 1999). The expo has traveled the country, including a stop in Philadelphia in June. Promoter Dan Chittock says the show offers “practical information for the uncertain times we live in,” but Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center says the expo features what he calls “a queer mix of people interested in organic farming and political extremism.” Visitors can buy anything from radiation detectors, tents, and survival rations to guides on avoiding income taxes and making their own license plates to avoid paying licensing fees for their vehicles. Lectures are offered with such titles as “Trapping Techniques for Self-Reliance and Survival,” “Don’t Get Caught With Your Pantry Down,” and “Save Your Life, Be Your Own Doctor.” Three seminars are about life under martial law. Previous expos have featured speakers such as militia leader Bo Gritz, who has spoken about coming plagues, imminent food shortages, and how President Clinton has sold out America. Stephen O’Leary, a University of Southern California professor who studies beliefs about the millennium, says that the expos have become recruitment centers for anti-government, survivalist militia groups who often hold racist and anti-Semitic views. “It’s not just about preparing for an emergency or disaster,” he says. “What they’re selling is a whole world view—a program for the apocalypse.” Potok, who has attended previous expos, says “it’s not unusual to see booths for the John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) and the Montana Militia next to a granola salesman.” The radical right, Potok says, is using fears of the upcoming millennium—“Y2K”—to fuel hysteria about what they say is the imminent declaration of martial law by the federal government and the eradication of constitutional liberties. Chittock calls such concerns “nonsense.” Barry Morrison of the Anti-Defamation League says of the expos: “What we’re concerned about is that some people take the position that the government is not to be trusted. Some of these exhibitors… portray people like Jews in an unfavorable light and as having undue control over their lives.” Morrison says anti-Semitic tracts espousing “Christian Identity” ideology (see 1960s and After) have appeared at previous expos. He also says Gritz’s Liberty Lobby is “the most influential anti-Semitic propaganda organization in America today.” He adds: “I’m not saying everyone [at the expos] is an extremist or subscribes to those views, but this is a vehicle that attracts that element. It’s part of the mix.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/11/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), asks on the Alliance’s weekly radio broadcast American Dissident Voices (ADV), “Why should I not be able to do what is right and natural and kill those who commit such an abomination?” Pierce is referring to white women who date African-American men (see 1988 and November 26, 2004). In the same broadcast, he says: “We should be going from door to door with a list of names and slaying those who have engineered this assault on our people.… And we know who the engineers are.… They are, first and foremost, the media bosses and the other leaders of the Jews.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Eric D. Hanson, a former Marine, overt racist, and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), attends a Ku Klux Klan rally in Skokie, Illinois. He refuses to stand behind police barriers and instead mingles in the crowd wearing a shirt depicting a Star of David with a slash through it. Eyewitnesses see him attack an African-American woman as she walks down Old Orchard Road, but Hanson flees before police can apprehend him. [Nicole Nichols, 2003]

Eric D. Hanson, a former Marine, overt racist, and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), is killed after a 14-hour gun battle and standoff with police in Lindenhurst, Illinois. Police investigtors approach Hanson while he is sitting in his car in front of his house, and attempt to arrest him for illegal weapons possession and gunrunning. Hanson flees, and the officers follow him to a grocery store parking lot. Hanson then opens fire on the officers, shooting one in the neck and thigh and a second in his bulletproof vest. Hanson runs inside the store, exits to again shoot at the officers, enters the store again and tells those inside to leave, and hides inside the now-deserted store. Police descend on the store. At 3:00 a.m., a remote-controlled bomb squad robot searches the store, but does not locate Hanson. A tactical weapons team then enters the store and finds Hanson hiding in a meat locker. Hanson fires at the tactical officers and they return fire, killing him. Hanson was previously convicted of assaulting an interracial couple in 1999, and told the jury during the proceedings: “Whites and blacks should be separate. It made me upset to see them together.” After his release from jail, he worked diligently for the National Alliance, distributing racist and anti-Semitic literature in Chicago and organizing a local unit in that city. According to a friend, Hanson particularly enjoyed “agitat[ing] the Jews,” and the friend tells reporters of an incident where Hanson and two other Alliance friends bought an Israeli flag in a local mall and stomped it in the middle of the mall while screaming anti-Semitic imprecations. Six months before his final standoff, Hanson assaulted an African-American woman after attending a Ku Klux Klan rally (see December 16, 2000). National Alliance members will memorialize Hanson in emails and Internet forum postings, calling him a hero, a “racial leader” and a “brave warrior,” and accusing police of setting up the situation to ensure Hanson’s death. Alliance members will grant Hanson the status of official “martyr” for the “cause.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003] After Hanson’s death, Dave Neesan, who will succeed Hanson as the Alliance chapter leader in Chicago, will write, “His honor, patriotism, and honesty led him to draw an obvious conclusion: America is in deep trouble, and real Americans—White Americans—are being pushed out of their country.” Hanson was a “white patriot” who was merely protecting his rights against an unfair and murderous police presence, Neesan will say. More importantly, according to Neesan, Hanson’s death galvanizes the Chicago chapter, pushing it to more prominent actions in and around Chicago, though nothing to the level of violence in which Hanson engaged. Like many other more modern white supremacists, Neesan believes in moderating the appearance of organizations like the Alliance, eschewing “white sheets” and racial epithets for suits and ties and toned-down language. Still, Neesan will claim, Hanson and his actions, including his assaults on African-Americans and his violent resistance to arrest, make him a role model for newer Alliance members. [Daily Herald (Arlington Heights), 5/2/2004]

A screenshot from ‘Stormfront for Kids,’ depicting the site’s logo and two Confederate-era flags. [Source: USA Today]USA Today reports on the participation of Derek Black, the 12-year-old son of Don Black, in his father’s Web activities. The elder Black operates Stormfront, the Internet’s first large-scale Web site promoting racial hatred and white supremacy (see March 1995). Black is proud of his son, telling a reporter that he “[c]ouldn’t ask for anything more.” He keeps a framed photo of Derek dressed in a Confederate soldier’s uniform above his desk in his home office. Derek runs the site’s children’s section, Stormfront for Kids, under his father’s supervision. The children’s pages feature puzzles, games, animated Confederate flags, audio files of white-pride songs, what USA Today calls “an inflammatory article about Martin Luther King Jr.,” and a personal statement from Derek asking visitors to stop sending him hate mail. “I get a lot of people who think I’m just a pawn in this horrible game of lies,” says Derek, who has been home-schooled since third grade by his mother, Chloe. “One person said: ‘Don’t listen to what your father says. Go turn on the Discovery Channel. Find out what the real world is like.’ Why would I turn on the TV to find out what the real world is like?” Stormfront for Kids is emblematic of the white supremacist movement’s outreach to younger potential members. Of the estimated 2,500 “hate” Web sites, 44 have sections designed for children, teens, and parents, according to Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against Hate. Though the number of sites may be small, USA Today reports that child psychologists and others monitoring their activity are alarmed about their reach and influence. “If you have a susceptible child who is angry and depressed, the sites could push a child toward certain behavior,” says psychiatrist Sirgay Sanger, director of New York City’s Early Care Center. “It’s the first step toward throwing a rock.” Weitzman says: “The number of people involved in these movements is not the only important factor. Sometimes when the numbers are low, members think the only way they can get their message across is through an act of domestic terrorism or extreme violence.” The most effective way that Stormfront and other groups such as the National Alliance (see 1970-1974) reach young people is through “skinhead” music, says Jordan Kessler, director of an Internet monitoring unit for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “This is a language kids understand—a band of cool-looking young guys blasting out music.” One label, Resistance Records (see Late 1993 and Summer 1999), sold “close to $1 million” in merchandise last year, mostly online, according to Erich Gliebe, the leader of the National Alliance and the CEO of Resistance Records. That label sells items such as Nazi parade flags and a CD titled “War Songs of the 3rd Reich, Vol. 3.” Black says, “People say, ‘You’re teaching your son Satan.’” But, he says, “I think anyone who is critical of me for instilling in my son my world view has lost track of how a society should function.” [USA Today, 7/16/2001]

Ann Coulter. [Source: Universal Press Syndicate]Conservative columnist Ann Coulter writes an enraged op-ed for the National Review. Reflecting on the 9/11 attacks and the loss of her friend Barbara Olson in the attacks (see (9:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Coulter says America’s retribution should be immediate and generalized: “This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson. We don’t need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don’t need an ‘international coalition.’ We don’t need a study on ‘terrorism.’ We certainly didn’t need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week.” Coulter says a “fanatical, murderous cult”—Islam—has “invaded” the nation, welcomed by Americans and protected by misguided laws that prohibit discrimination and “‘religious’ profiling.” She blasts airport security measures that insist on checking every passenger—“[a]irports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.” She concludes by calling for all-out vengeance: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.” [National Review, 9/13/2001] In October 2002, Reason magazine’s Sara Rimensnyder will call Coulter’s screed “the single most infamous foreign policy suggestion inspired by 9/11.” [Reason Magazine, 10/2002]

Mark Anthony Stroman, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, murders Dallas store owner Waqar Hasan as he grills hamburgers in his store. Stroman will later tell a prison inmate that his murder of Hasan is his ninth crime against Muslims and Middle Easterners, and says he is murdering them in revenge for the 9/11 attacks (see October 4, 2001 and After). [Push Junction, 7/6/2011] Almost ten years later, Stroman will be executed for a similar murder (see July 20, 2011).

Mark Anthony Stroman, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, shoots Rais Bhuiyan in the face with a shotgun while Bhuiyan is working at a Dallas gas station and convenience store. Bhuiyan is a former Air Force pilot from Bangladesh. As Bhuiyan will later recall the incident, Stroman bursts into his store wearing a hat, sunglasses, and a bandanna, and carrying a derringer—a small pistol modified to fire shotgun cartridges. Bhuiyan believes he is going to be robbed and tells Stroman: “Don’t shoot me please. Take all the money.” Instead of robbing Bhuiyan, Stroman asks, “Where are you from?” Bhuiyan, nonplussed, says, “Excuse me?” and Stroman shoots him. Bhuiyan, pouring blood, falls to the floor and Stroman leaves. Bhuiyan is able to get help by flagging down a nearby ambulance. Initially, he is discharged from the hospital after only one day because he lacks health insurance; for months he sleeps on friends’ couches and relies on physicians’ samples for medication, including painkillers and eye drops. He is eventually able to have his right eye operated on, but loses much of the vision in it. Three dozen shotgun pellets remain in his face. He will say: “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was not a threat to him. I couldn’t believe someone would just shoot you like that.” Stroman will later tell a prison inmate that he is engaged in a killing spree against Muslims and Middle Easterners (see September 15, 2001), and says he is murdering them in revenge for the 9/11 attacks (see October 4, 2001 and After). [Push Junction, 7/6/2011; Independent, 7/9/2011; New York Times, 7/18/2011; CBS News, 7/18/2011] Bhuiyan will attempt to intervene to prevent Stroman, convicted of murdering a store owner weeks after he shot him, from being executed (see (July 18, 2011)). [New York Times, 7/18/2011] That effort will fail, and Stroman will be executed (see July 20, 2011).

Mark Anthony Stroman, a repeat violent felon and member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, murders a Hindu man as he robs a Mesquite, Texas, gas station. The murder is later classified as a hate crime, as Stroman believes store owner Vasudev Patel, an Indian, is a Middle Eastern Muslim. Stroman enters the gas station early in the morning and demands money from Patel. Patel reaches for a .22 caliber pistol that he keeps under the cash register, but does not retrieve it. Stroman shoots Patel in the chest with a .44 caliber pistol; while Patel is dying on the floor, Stroman attempts to force open the cash register, and tells Patel to “open the register or I’ll kill you.” Law enforcement officials use surveillance video to locate and arrest Stroman. While in jail, Stroman boasts of the robbery and murder to a fellow inmate who will later testify against Stroman. According to the inmate, Stroman tells him that he had “been in the store two or three times previously to check it out and he didn’t see any cameras.” Stroman tells the inmate that he deliberately murdered Patel with a “big long pistol.” Moreover, Stroman says he killed Patel not because of any intent to rob him, but because he hates people of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman tells the inmate that the 9/11 attacks justify what he calls his string of violent attacks, including previous murders, against people he believes are of Middle Eastern origin (see September 15, 2001 and September 21, 2001). Stroman is clear that the violent spree is racially motivated, and says that he intends on going to a shopping mall and beginning to shoot everyone in the mall because so many Middle Eastern people are there. Stroman says that the assaults were his patriotic duty. The inmate will later recall Stroman telling him that since the country “hadn’t done [its] job” since 9/11, “he was going to do it for us.” Stroman is found guilty of Patel’s murder in April 2002 after admitting his guilt, and is sentenced to death; an appeals court certifies the verdict and sentencing in November 2003. Multiple attempts by Stroman to appeal the verdict, including filings with the US Supreme Court, as well as appeals for clemency, are denied. Texas prosecutors present an array of evidence against Stroman, including definitive proof that if released, he would pose an immediate threat to the community. During his trial, they present testimony that he is what Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott terms “a devout white supremacist with antipathy towards those of other races.” [Push Junction, 7/6/2011; The Australian, 7/16/2011; New York Times, 7/18/2011; Think Progress, 7/19/2011] Almost ten years later, Stroman will be executed for killing Patel (see July 20, 2011).

Erich Josef Gliebe. [Source: Cleveland Scene]William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978) dies of cancer. He is replaced by Erich Josef Gliebe, a former boxer who runs Resistance Records, the Alliance-allied white power music label (see Late 1993 and Summer 1999), and publishes the label’s associated magazine, Resistance. Gliebe’s father was a member of the German Army during World War II, and Gliebe says he grew up “racially conscious.” Plans for Alliance after His Death - Pierce dies unexpectedly, but had long cited his failing health and advancing age as causes for concern, and said the Alliance must not make the mistakes of earlier white supremacist organizations such as the American Nazi Party (which fell apart after its leader and Pierce’s mentor, George Lincoln Rockwell, was assassinated in 1967) and the Christian Nationalist Crusade (which collapsed after the death of its leader Gerald L.K. Smith). He made careful arrangements for the Alliance to continue after his death, and leaves almost all of his personal property to the organization, including 230 acres of property in West Virginia that houses the Alliance’s compound and headquarters (see 1985), along with some 60 acres belonging to Pierce’s “Cosmotheist Community Church,” which he has tried to classify as tax-exempt (see 1978). Multi-Million Dollar Business - Under Gliebe’s leadership, the Alliance generates over $4 million a year in income, largely from the sale of white power music recordings, books, videos, and related merchandise. It broadcasts a weekly radio program, American Dissident Voices. In August 2002, the Center for New Community writes that the Alliance will likely “continue to play a strong role in the contemporary white nationalist movement, particularly by recruiting young people through its white power music distribution and merchandising.” (The organization has been particularly successful at disseminating its message during concerts by the Texas thrash-metal group Pantera, whose lead singer has worn pro-fascist shirts on stage; Alliance members hand out recruitment flyers at the shows headlined: “Remember when Heavy Metal was for Whites only? We do!”) It sells two video games, one called “Ethnic Cleansing,” where players get to exterminate minority citizens in a graphic, brutal “first-person shooter” style. Largest Neo-Nazi Group in North America - The Alliance claims over 2,500 members and units or “proto-units” (local groups that have met membership requirements but not yet been sanctioned by national headquarters) in 43 American and five Canadian cities, making it the largest and best-organized neo-Nazi group in North America. It has more than doubled its membership since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Moderating Message, Expanding Contact with Similar Groups - Pierce led the organization in “moderating” its message, abandoning the Klan robes, brown Nazi-like uniforms, camouflage attire, and coarse racial slurs that other groups often sport. Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights has written: “Their only uniform will be their white skins. They will seek to establish a white nation-state, with definable economic, political, and racial borders, out of the wreckage they hope to create of the United States. And from Pierce they will have learned the arts and sciences of Aryan revolution.” Along with their white power musical concerts and rallies, Alliance members have marched with neo-Confederate groups and worked with younger, more violent “skinhead” groups. Generally, the Alliance shuns many public rallies, preferring instead to “build a revolutionary infrastructure” by training what the Center for New Community will call “dedicated cadres of activists outside the eye of the public.” It has worked closely with the more overtly violent Hammerskin Nation, both in distributing “white power” music (the “Hammerskins” distribute music through Panzerfaust Records) and coordinating public activities. White Supremacists Praise Pierce after Death - A number of white supremacist leaders will praise Pierce in the days after his death. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says Pierce “helped people think straight about the Jewish Question and the other vital realities of race.” The overtly racist British National Party (BNP) says in a statement: “The death of Dr. Pierce has opened a huge gap in the nationalist movement in the United States. We hope for the sake of the future generations of white children for whom he felt so strongly that it will not be filled by crude inferior copies of William Pierce—the man was unique!” Dan Gentry of Christian Research praises “Pierce’s love and concern for the racial camaraderie of Celto-Saxons.” Richard Butler, the head of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), says, “The White Aryan race has lost a great intellectual mind and a Noble Warrior for Gods [sic] eternal truth.” And Matthew Hale, the leader of the violent separatist World Church of the Creator (see May 1996 and After), writes, “We appreciate the comradeship of many National Alliance members over the years and undoubtedly [Pierce’s] presence will be missed.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

The World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After) loses a trademark infringement lawsuit brought against it by the Te-Ta-Ma Truth Foundation, which had successfully trademarked the name “Church of the Creator” years before. Federal District Court Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow originally rules in WCOTC’s favor, but her verdict is overturned on appeal. She orders the group to stop using the name, to give up its Web addresses, and to turn over all printed material bearing the name. Group leader Matthew Hale refuses to comply, and files a lawsuit against Lefkow, claiming that she has ordered the destruction of the group’s Bibles. “If federal judges are to sit in judgment of the people, the people must be able to sit in judgment of them,” Hale says. The WCOTC’s various Web sites urge its followers to picket Lefkow’s church, and refer to her as “a white woman married to a Jew with three mixed grandchildren.” [New York Times, 1/9/2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005] For years afterwards, Lefkow will be plagued by an incessant round of death threats, as WCOTC and other white supremacist organizations publish her name, address, and family photographs on their Web sites along with an array of violent threats. In 2003, Hale will be charged with soliciting her murder (see January 9, 2003). “Underground” radio broadcaster Hal Turner will say on his show that Lefkow is “worthy of being killed,” adding that “it wouldn’t be legal, but in my opinion it wouldn’t be wrong.” In 2005, Lefkow’s husband and mother will be murdered, possibly by Hale supporters (see February 28, 2005). [New York Times, 3/2/2005]

Matthew Hale, the leader of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), shows up for a contempt of court hearing in a Chicago courtroom based on his refusal to give up his group’s name after losing a trademark infringement lawsuit (see November 2002). When Hale appears, he is arrested for soliciting the murder of the judge who presided over the lawsuit, Federal District Court Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. Hale recently claimed Lefkow was prejudiced against him because she is married to a Jew and has children who are biracial. Law enforcement officials with Chicago’s Joint Terrorism Task Force say Hale asked another person to “forcibly assault and murder” Lefkow. FBI spokesman Thomas Kneir says: “Certainly freedom of speech and freedom of religion are important in our society here in America. But the threat of physical violence will not be tolerated.” US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald adds, “Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to solicit murder.” Hale is accompanied in the courtroom by about a dozen followers, many of whom raise their fists in what they call a Roman salute but that is more widely known as a Nazi salute. One WCOTC member, Shawm Powers, says: “This is totally bogus—it’s in our constitutional rights to believe in a religion. We are a bona fide religion, and they are trying to take that away from us. Matt Hale is not a violent man, he doesn’t advocate violence.” Anti-Defamation League official Richard Hirschhaut disagrees, saying: “Matt Hale has been allowed with impunity to engage in terrorist-like activity for four years now. He has had blood on his hands for more than four years. He is now where he should be.” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center calls Hale “the most dangerous American racist of his generation.” Attorney Glenn Greenwald, representing Hale, says he believes the charge against Hale stems from what he calls a misinterpretation of Hale’s statement that “we are in a state of war with Judge Lefkow.” Greenwald says: “They are probably trying to take things he said along the lines of political advocacy and turn it into a crime. The FBI may have interpreted this protected speech as a threat against a federal judge, but it’s probably nothing more than some heated rhetoric.” During Hale’s incarceration, special administrative measures will be imposed to reduce his ability to communicate with his followers. [CNN, 1/8/2003; New York Times, 1/9/2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The press will later learn that Hale solicited the murder from FBI informant Anthony Evola, a Chicago area pizza delivery man who was asked by Hale to distribute racist and anti-Semitic pamphlets to schoolchildren. Evola instead called the Chicago Public Schools to warn them about the racist material, and was later asked to become an FBI informant. In the months that followed, Evola became chief of Hale’s “White Beret” security squad and frequently traveled with Hale. Evola provided FBI officials with an email from Hale soliciting Lefkow’s home address, and a tape recording of a discussion between the two about Lefkow’s murder. On the tape, Evola said, “We going to exterminate the rat?” Hale replied, “Well, whatever you want to do basically.” Evola said, “The Jew rat.” Hale then said: “You know, my position has always been that I, you know, I’m going to fight within the law… but that information has been provided.… If you wish to do anything yourself, you can.” Evola replied, “Consider it done,” and Hale responded, “Good.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2005; Associated Press, 4/26/2005] In addition, former WCOTC leader Jon Fox will testify that Hale asked him in December 2002 to kill Lefkow and others involved in the legal dispute. [Chicago Sun-Times, 4/14/2004; Chicago Tribune, 4/15/2004]

A story in the New York Times about captured anti-abortion extremist Eric Rudolph (see April 14, 2005) portrays the sympathy many locals have for Rudolph, and ties Rudolph’s acts of terrorism with the Christian faith as espoused by some. Crystal Davis of Murphy, North Carolina, where Rudolph hid from authorities for five years, tells a reporter: “He’s a Christian and I’m a Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion. Those are our values. And I don’t see what he did as a terrorist act.” Many Murphy residents agree with Davis’s views, and express their sympathy for Rudolph and their disdain for the federal agents who combed the area looking for him. Birdhouse builder William Hoyt says: “We thought it was kind of funny when the feds rolled in here all arrogant. They kept saying they didn’t need our help. It put a lot of people off. Nobody around here condones murder, but I think a lot of people weren’t sure which side to be on.” Some Murphy residents sport T-shirts with the slogans “Run, Rudolph, Run” and “Eric Rudolph—Hide and Seek Champion of the World.” Davis says she would have helped Rudolph had she been given the opportunity. “If he came to my door, I’d give him food,” she says. “That’s just how we are with strangers.” Assistant high school principal Bill Gaither says: “I agree with his views. But not his ways. I’m glad they finally got him.” [New York Times, 6/1/2003] Weeks later, liberal blogger David Neiwert will cite the Times article and ask if Rudolph might well be termed a “Christian terrorist.” Neiwert will write, referring to the “Christian Identity” movement of religious white supremacists and anti-Semites of which Rudolph is affiliated (see 1960s and After): “Both Mrs. Davis and the reporter’s basic question eliminated the distinction between Identity and Christianity—something that has become increasingly easy to do as Identity rhetoric attunes itself to the mainstream, and conservatism itself becomes increasingly bellicose and intolerant. These lines blurred even further as other media reports picked up the ‘Christian terrorist’ idea and played with it.” Washington Post reporter Alan Cooperman asks, “Is he a ‘Christian terrorist’?” and goes on: “The question is not just whether Rudolph is a terrorist, or whether he considers himself a Christian. It is whether he planted bombs at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, two abortion clinics, and a gay nightclub to advance a religious ideology—and how numerous, organized and violent others who share that ideology may be.” Cooperman then quotes a sociology professor from Idaho State University, James Aho, who says he is reluctant to use the term “Christian terrorist,” saying, “I would prefer to say that Rudolph is a religiously inspired terrorist, because most mainstream Christians consider Christian Identity to be a heresy.” If Christians take offense at the juxtaposition of the words “Christian” and “terrorist,” he adds, “that may give them some idea of how Muslims feel” when they constantly hear the term “Islamic terrorism.… Religiously inspired terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon, and every major world religion has people who have appropriated the label of their religion in order to legitimize their violence.… I’m inclined to believe that people who are violent in their inclinations search out a religious home that justifies their violence.” However, Syracuse University professor Michael Barkun says, “Based on what we know of Rudolph so far, and admittedly it’s fragmentary, there seems to be a fairly high likelihood that he can legitimately be called a Christian terrorist.” Barkin has been a consultant to the FBI on Christian extremist groups. [Washington Post, 6/2/2003; David Neiwert, 6/17/2003]

The Reverend Fred Phelps, minister of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, announces plans to erect a monument in the Casper, Wyoming, City Park to “commemorate” the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard five years ago (see October 9, 1998 and After). According to Phelps, the marker would bear a likeness to Shepard and read: “MATTHEW SHEPARD, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God’s Warning: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.’ Leviticus 18:22.” Few Casper City Council members support Phelps’s plans. Councilwoman Barb Watters says: “When Phelps puts on one side his picture with the thing about killing all the gays, and they put on the other side of the thing a picture of Hitler that says ‘Kill all the Jews.’ That is what you are opening yourself up for.” Councilman Paul Bertoglio notes: “I think the hate language will find a very cold reception in this community. I think this community’s backbone is going to come up and say, ‘We are not going to accept it.’” Of Shepard, Phelps says: “It all comes back to Casper, Wyoming. That is his home, that is where he was born, where that church is, where those institutions… conspired in a confluence of evil resulting in a Zeitgeist that is extraordinarily evil. He [Shepard] was not a hero. This is a great monster sin against God. It is not an innocent alternate lifestyle. And all that has come down in that one little evil town called Casper, Wyoming. And we can’t ignore that.” The city will not allow the monument to be erected. [Casper Tribune, 10/3/2003] The WBC soon builds a virtual “monument” to Shepard on its Web site (see 1997), which depicts him burning in hell. A photo of Shepard is wreathed in animated flames, and mousing over the photograph triggers an audio response of recorded screams and a voice shouting, “For God’s sake, listen to Phelps!” A counter on the site displays how many days Shepard has “Been in Hell.” The site claims: “WBC does not support the murder of Matthew Shepard: ‘thou shalt not kill.’ Unless his killers repent, they will receive the same sentence that Matthew Shepard received—eternal fire. However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known. He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight.” [Global Oneness, 2011; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012]

Posse Comitatus and Aryan Nations leader James Wickstrom (see 1969, 1975 - 1978, 1984, and 2003) tells a reporter in a videotaped interview: “I’d like to see these Jews all be brought to the VA [Veterans Administration Hospital] and wooden chairs be put down on the lawn. Tie the Jews in. Bring these veterans down who have been mutilated… and give them baseball bats and let them beat these Jews to death! Every one of them! Take these chairs and Jews after they’re beaten to death, throw ‘em in the wood chipper! And from the wood chipper let the remains go into a big incinerary [sic] truck, which is right behind the wood chipper, and give them the holocaust they rightly deserve!” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Richard Butler, the increasingly decrepit and infirm leader of what remains of the Aryan Nations (see Late 2000 - 2001), is propped up by about 40 of his followers on a lawn chair with a Confederate flag in the back of a pickup truck; he is then driven through a parade in downtown Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Human rights activists shout slogans at him as he slumps in the chair. He is 86 years old and will die in his sleep two months later. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

After the death of Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler (see July 2004), the organization, already deeply divided and dwindling in size and influence (see Late 2000 - 2001), splits into two rival factions. One is headed by August Kreis in Pennsylvania and the other by Jonathan Williams in Georgia. Kreis and Williams are divided in part over the issue of whether neo-Nazis can find common ground with Muslim terrorists based on their mutual hatred of Jews. In 2005, Kreis tells CNN, “And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples’ heart, in the Aryan race, that they [jihadists] have for their father, who they call Allah.” Another Nations leader, Charles Juba, attempts to anoint organization “pastor” James Wickstrom (see 1969, 1984, and 2003) as the group’s chaplain. Wickstrom aligns himself with Juba’s breakaway faction, in what some believe is an attempt to claim leadership in Butler’s wake. Aryan Nations member Floyd Cochran, who will leave the group and renounce its racist teachings, will later say: “Jim Wickstrom has a certain stature in the racist movement—one Juba doesn’t have—and especially among the more religious, the biggest ones that are really into the Christian Identity aspect (see 1960s and After).… With the death of Richard Butler, the Christian Identity aspect of the movement is now more focused on Wickstrom.” Days after Butler’s death, Juba announced he was appointing Wickstrom “Chaplin” (sic) and said the group’s new slogan would be “No Jew left alive in 2005.” However, Wickstrom has powerful enemies within the movement, not the least because in 2003 he eloped with the wife of another Christian Identity preacher, his former friend and colleague Keith Kallstrom. In reaction, Kallstrom vowed to cut off Wickstrom’s head and place it on his mountain, and shortly thereafter was arrested after driving to Michigan from Oklahoma in a pickup truck loaded with firearms and grenades, in an apparent attempt to find and kill Wickstrom. Wickstrom never becomes a full-fledged leader of the group, and though he will continue to broadcast a weekly radio program over the Internet, he will experience a steady decline in his influence among Aryan Nations and other racist, white supremacist groups. Both Kreis’s and Williams’s factions will continue to slide into irrelevance, though Kreis will have some success recruiting members from motorcycle gangs in South Carolina. By 2010, the only remnants of the groups will be small individual cliques and their accompanying Web sites. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

A popular image of Adolf Hitler, created in the style of the 2008 Obama campaign poster and using the campaign slogan ‘Yes We Can,’ posted on Podblanc in 2009. [Source: Podblanc / OccupiedOregon (.com)]Avowed white supremacist Craig Cobb (see October 31, 2005) moves to Estonia and founds Podblanc, an Internet-based videosharing Web site. It is similar to YouTube, but Cobb and his supporters refuse to use that facility, calling it “Jew Tube” because its operators censor racist and anti-Semitic content. Podblanc offers over 1,000 channels of video content, including combat handgun training, bomb-making tutorials, a description of security measures at three northern California synagogues, and an audio recording of The Turner Diaries, the infamous race-war fantasy novel (see 1978). The most popular video on the site shows Russian neo-Nazis beheading and shooting Asiatic immigrants; other popular videos show skinheads attacking random Jewish and minority victims. Cobb was a member of the violent World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) until its collapse after its leader, Matthew Hale, was arrested for soliciting the murder of a judge (see January 9, 2003 and 2004-2005). Cobb posted the name and home address of the judge on the internet, which may have led to the murder of her husband and mother (see February 28, 2005). Cobb has also attended events sponsored by the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), and distributes “The Aryan Alternative,” a white supremacist periodical written by Alex Linder, the founder of the Vanguard News Network (VNN), and published by former White Patriot Party leader Glenn Miller. Cobb documents WCOTC, VNN, and other organizations and events on Podblanc. Estonian authorities will force Cobb to leave their country in 2009; in 2010, Podblanc will go dormant when its host decides to refuse to carry its racist and violent content any longer. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2007; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2009; Anti-Racist Canada, 6/25/2010]

Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey are found dead of gunshots to the head in the Lefkows’ Chicago basement. The two are the husband and mother, respectively, of Federal District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who has endured four years’ worth of death threats ever since she ordered the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After) to abandon its name as a result of a trademark infringement lawsuit (see November 2002). Authorities are investigating whether members of the Creativity Movement, as the WCOTC is now known, are responsible for the murders. In 2004, WCOTC leader Matthew Hale was convicted of soliciting Lefkow’s murder (see April 26, 2004). Her daughter Laura Lefkow says, “I think she’s very upset with herself, maybe, for being a judge and putting her family in this danger, but there’s no way she should have known.” White supremacists celebrate the murders on their Web sites, while others theorize that Hale’s enemies murdered the two to affect his upcoming sentencing for his crimes (see April 6, 2005). Bill White, the editor of the Libertarian Socialist News, writes: “Everyone associated with the Matt Hale trial has deserved assassination for a long time. I don’t feel bad that Judge Lefkow’s family was murdered today. In fact, when I heard the story, I laughed.” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, says, “We saw what happened the last time Matt Hale got slapped in the face by the system; the price of that was two dead and nine severely wounded.” Potok is referring to the 1999 killing spree by WCOTC member Benjamin Smith in response to Hale’s denial of a law license (see July 2-4, 1999). “Now Matt Hale is about to be sentenced, very probably, to most of his natural life to federal prison. It’s very possible that a Hale follower or sympathizer has decided to fight back.” Hale’s friend Billy Roper, who leads a group called White Revolution, disavows the murders, but draws a parallel between the Lefkow murders and the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992), saying: “We can stand alongside the federal law enforcement community in saying just as they felt a deep regret and sadness over the death of Randy Weaver’s family, so we also feel a deep sense of regret and sadness over the death of Judge Lefkow’s family. If it was the case that someone was misguided and thought that they were helping Matt Hale, then it would be similar in that other people had suffered for one person’s mistake.” Hale’s mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, says her son had nothing to do with the murders: “He had nothing to do with what went on last night. My son is sitting in a hole where he’s not allowed to even speak loud enough to be audible. Common sense would tell you, if he were into having somebody kill somebody—which he is not—would he have somebody go kill the judge’s family just before he’s sentenced? Somebody has done this to make him get an enhanced sentence.” Chicago Police Department official James Molloy says: “There is much speculation about possible links between this crime and the possible involvement of hate groups. This is but one facet of our investigation. We are looking in many, many directions.” [New York Times, 3/2/2005; Chicago Tribune, 3/10/2005] Days later, the Chicago police will say that a man with no connection to Hale’s group may be responsible for the shootings (see March 10, 2005).

White supremacist Matthew Hale, the leader of the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC—see May 1996 and After), receives a 40-year sentence for soliciting the murder of US District Court Judge Joan Lefkow (see January 9, 2003). Lefkow ruled against Hale’s group in a trademark dispute (see November 2002). Hale is sentenced after a rambling, two-hour statement in which he claims he is the victim. “I have to go back to a solitary cell—I have to go back to hell,” Hale tells Judge James Moody. “They want me to die in a hole.” In his statement, Hale compares the FBI to the Gestapo, says the national news media was out to get him, blames his former lawyer for representing him poorly, and chants the national anthem. He claims that he and Lefkow are “on the same side against these liars.” Moody, unmoved by Hale’s statement, gives Hale the maximum sentence for his crimes. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald argued that Hale’s crime was essentially an act of domestic terrorism and Moody agrees. “Mr. Hale is not concerned about taking someone’s life, but rather how to do it without getting caught,” Moody says. “I consider Mr. Hale to be extremely dangerous and the offense for which he was convicted to be extremely egregious.” After the ruling, Fitzgerald tells reporters, “I put no stock in his claims, the crocodile tears, that he didn’t do anything wrong.” Hale’s mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, tells reporters: “I think it’s absolutely horrible. “Matt’s the only one in there telling the… truth.” [National Public Radio, 4/6/2005; Associated Press, 4/7/2005] Hale will serve his sentence at the Florence, Colorado, “supermax” prison, the same prison where convicted bombers Eric Rudolph (see July 18, 2005) and Ted Kaczynski (see April 3, 1996) are held. [Chicago Sun-Times, 4/28/2005]

A photograph of Doug Hanks (left) attending a March 2005 protest of the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag in Charlotte. [Source: Pam's House Blend (.com)]A candidate for Charlotte, North Carolina’s city council drops out of the race after the press learns that he has posted over 4,000 comments to the white supremacist Web site Stormfront (see March 1995). Doug Hanks, seeking the Republican nomination for one of four at-large council seats, claims the postings were fictional and designed to win white supremacists’ trust as he researched a novel he was writing. He says the book was also meant to appeal to white supremacists. “I needed information for the book and some other writings I was doing,” Hanks tells a reporter. “I did what I thought I needed to do to establish myself as a credible white nationalist.” In one June 1, 2005 posting, he said that blacks should be treated like “rabid beasts.” Hanks says his self-published novel, called Patriot Act, takes themes from The Turner Diaries, (see 1978), an inflammatory “future history” novel that tells of a white supremacist overthrow of the US government and the genocidal extermination of minorities thereafter. On his Web site, he describes himself as a general contractor, author, model, and actor. Mark Pellin, the editor of the weekly Rhinoceros Times who interviewed Hanks, says Hanks never mentioned a book during their interview: “At no point did he indicate that it had anything to do with a persona he took on or was researching for the book. He tried to explain the quotes as they were for heritage, not hate.” Hanks continued posting on Stormfront well after the book was published. Hanks says: “I was asked to write a column here and there. But what I should have done when I began running for office was to separate the two. Unfortunately, it has blown up in my face.” [Pam Spaulding, 8/5/2005; Associated Press, 8/6/2005]

A selection from Adkisson’s ‘manifesto’ explaining his desire to kill liberals. [Source: Jim David Adkisson / Crooks and Liars] (click image to enlarge)Jim David Adkisson, a former Army mechanic held on first degree murder charges in lieu of a $1 million bail after killing two people and wounding seven at a Knoxville, Tennessee, church (see July 27, 2008) [NBC News, 7/18/2008; Associated Press, 7/28/2008; CNN, 7/28/2008] , apparently chose to kill members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (TVUUC) because the church is considered a liberal organization. This conclusion is drawn from statements to the police and a rambling four-page document found in his car. In those statements and the document, Adkisson expresses his intense hatred of liberals, blacks, and homosexuals. He tells police that he opened fire in the church because he “wanted to kill liberals,” and the TVUUC has a reputation as one of Knoxville’s gathering places for liberals. “That church had received some publicity in the recent past regarding its liberal stance on things,” says Knoxville police chief Sterling Owen, “and that is at least one of the issues we believe caused that church to be targeted.” Adkisson will express no remorse whatsoever for his crimes [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; Guardian, 7/28/2008; New York Times, 7/29/2008; ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009] , later saying that if given the chance, he would do the same thing again (see February 9, 2009), and characterizes his motives as rooted in patriotism. [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009] He writes that he expected to be in the church until police arrived, and ultimately to be slain by police. [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009] Police later add that evidence shows Adkisson planned the shooting for a week, but as Owen notes, “I’m sure this is something that’s been building a long time.” [Guardian, 7/28/2008] Friends and neighbors tell of an angry, embittered man who hates extravagantly and blames others for his misfortunes, though some describe him as “friendly” and recall him spending a lot of time on his motorcycle. [Fox News, 7/28/2008; Knoxville News Sentinel, 7/28/2008] “Adkisson was a loner who hates blacks, gays, and anyone different from him,” says longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood. [Raw Story, 7/28/2008]Hate Crime - Police are determining whether to charge Adkisson with the commission of a hate crime. [CNN, 7/28/2008] Knox County commissioner Mark Harmon, a member of the church, says that knowing of Adkisson’s feelings towards liberals and gays “does clarify just what type of hate crime this was. Regardless of motivations, when someone comes into your house of worship and shoots a shotgun indiscriminately it’s an earth-shattering act of hatred.” [New York Times, 7/29/2008]Frustration at Unemployment - The document found in Adkisson’s car is divided into four parts. The first gives some details about Adkisson’s frustration at being unable to find a job, a situation for which he blames unnamed “liberals.” Adkisson writes that he is a former soldier and accomplished husband who cannot find work as a mechanic, and whose wife left him. “Over the years, I’ve had some good jobs, but I always got layed [sic] off,” he wrote. “Now I’m 58 years old and I can’t get a decent job. I’m told I’m ‘over qualified,’ which is a code word for ‘too damned old,’ like I’m expected to age gracefully in poverty. No thanks! I’m done.” [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009] Police later report that Adkisson was on the verge of losing his government-subsidized food stamps when he went on his shooting spree. [Raw Story, 7/28/2008]Hatred of Liberals - The document quickly turns to Adkisson’s deep hatred of liberals. “[Democrats] are all a bunch of traitors,” Adkisson writes. “Liberals have attacked every major institution that made America great.” He continues: “I’ve always wondered why I was put on the earth.… [L]ately I’ve been feeling helpless in our war on terrorism. But I realized I could engage the terrorists’ allies here in America. The best allies they’ve got.” He slams the “liberal Supreme Court Justices” and Washington Democrats, and spends some vitriol on President Obama, whom he calls “Osama Hussein Obama,” a “radical leftist” who “looks like Curious George.” A police affidavit reads in part: “He felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets. Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement… he would then target those that had voted them into office.” As a generalization, Adkisson writes, “Liberals are a pest like termites, millions of them… the only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets, kill them where they gather.” [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; CNN, 7/28/2008; ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009]Hatred of TVUUC - Adkisson then turns to his hatred of the TVUUC, which he calls a “cult” that “worships the God of Secularism” and a “den of un-American vipers.” He accuses the church of elitism and hypocrisy, saying it accepts “perverts” but hates conservatives, and asks, “[H]ow is a white woman having a niger [sic] baby progress?” He calls the church members “ultra liberals” who are “foot soldiers” for liberals in government. “Don’t let the word church mislead you,” he writes. “This isn’t a church, it’s a cult. They don’t even believe in God. They worship the God of secularism.… The UU church is the fountainhead, the veritable wellspring of anti-American organizations.” Adkisson’s motivation to attack this specific church may have a personal element; he writes of the church: “They embrace every pervert that comes down the pike, but if they find out your [sic] a conservative, they absolutely hate you. I know. I experienced it.” [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009] A former neighbor of Adkisson’s, Karen Massey, says that Adkisson may hate the idea of religion altogether. She recalls a conversation she had with him centering on the news that her daughter had just graduated from a nearby Bible college. After she explained that she was a Christian, Massey recalls: “He almost turned angry. He seemed to get angry at that. He said that everything in the Bible contradicts itself if you read it.” Massey recalls Adkisson frequently complaining about his parents, who apparently “made him go to church all his life.… He acted like he was forced to do that.” [Fox News, 7/28/2008]'Hate Crime' - Adkisson writes flatly, “This was a hate Crime [and] a Political Protest.” He continues: “This was a Symbolic Killing.… I wanted to kill every Democrat in the Senate” and other such places, as well as “everyone in the Mainstream Media,” but since “I couldn’t get to the generals and high ranking officers… I went after the foot soldiers, the chickensh_t liberals that vote in these traitorous people.” He concludes his document by explaining: “No one gets out of this world alive so I’ve chosen to skip the bad years of poverty.… The future looks bleak. I’m absolutely fed up! So I thought I’d do something good for this country—kill Democrats ‘til (sic) the cops kill me.… Liberals are a pest like termites… the only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets.… I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself… kill liberals. Tell the cop that killed me that I said, ‘Thanks, I needed that.’” [Adkisson, 7/27/2008 ; ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009]Police: Apartment Contains Right-Wing Books - A police search reveals that Adkisson’s home contains brass knuckles, empty boxes of shotgun shells, a handgun, and an array of right-wing political books. Before the search, Adkisson tells police that he left the door unlocked for them because, he says, “he expected to be killed during the assault.” Among the books found by the police: Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by Fox News and radio talk show host Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly. [Raw Story, 7/28/2008; Knoxville News Sentinel, 7/28/2008]Reactions - Mark Hulsether of ReligionDispatches (.org) writes that Americans need to look at Adkisson’s document “squarely and soberly—both the pain and despair (and apparently sincere patriotism) underlying the manifesto, as well as its sensationally hateful, twisted, and violent ideas. It is time for people from across the political spectrum—not only liberals but also sincere people on the right, as well as people in the mainstream media who too-often enable the far right—to use today’s news as a wake-up call. Discourses that demonize ‘liberalism’ and/or treat such demonizing as a harmless joke (as when Ann Coulter called for terrorists to bomb the New York Times building) seem even less funny today than they did yesterday.” [ReligionDispatches (.org), 2/10/2009] After learning of some of Adkisson’s beliefs and statements, Amy Broyles, who was at the church the day of the shooting, will tell a reporter that Adkisson “was a man who was hurt in the world and feeling that nothing was going his way. He turned the gun on people who were mostly likely to treat him lovingly and compassionately and be the ones to help someone in that situation.” [Associated Press, 7/28/2008]

An unrepentant Jim Adkisson, right, shares a laugh with his lawyer Mark Stephens during Adkisson’s court proceedings. [Source: Lisa Hudson / AP]Jim David Adkisson, charged with killing two and wounding seven in his attack on a Tennessee church congregation (see July 27, 2008), pleads guilty to all charges in a Knoxville, Tennessee, courthouse. Adkisson has accepted a sentence of life in prison. District Attorney General Randall Nichols tells the court that Adkisson “knowingly created a great risk of death to two or more persons other than the victims murdered,” and that the murders “were committed in the course of an act of terrorism.” In his explanation for his actions, given in a four-page document found in his car in the minutes after the shooting (see July 27, 2008 and After), Adkisson said his motives were rooted in patriotism and a desire to kill political liberals. The same day he pleads guilty, Adkisson releases the document to the press, though the local sheriff denies him access to reporters who may wish to interview him. Adkisson’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, says he advised Adkisson to go to trial using an insanity defense, but Adkisson refused, saying the plea deal is “the honorable thing to do.” Stephens adds: “He pled guilty to everything he was charged with. He accepted his responsibility. I’m sorry for those folks that went through that ordeal.” One of the congregation members who wrestled Adkisson to the ground during the shooting spree, John Bohstedt, responds to Stephens’s contention by saying: “There’s no insanity defense that I can see, unbalance, yes, bitter, yes, evil, yes.… I’m sickened that he shows no signs of remorse.” Tammy Sommers, who is recuperating from shotgun wounds inflicted by Adkisson, says, “He needs to stay in prison, which is what’s happening.” A convict who spent time in jail with Adkisson, Matthew David Chamberlain, says Adkisson told him that the motive behind the attack was purely ideological. “He said if he got out [of prison], he’d do it again,” Chamberlain says. Local citizen Brian Griffith believes Chamberlain is correct, and echoes the sentiments of many local residents by saying he was offended by Adkisson’s demeanor in court. “Today, he just sat there and sneered and seemed proud of it,” Griffith says. Church choir leader Vicki Masters, a witness to the shootings, agrees. “When he first came out into the courtroom, he had a look of sheer evil, he really did—evil as well as arrogance,” she says. “And he sat down after he looked around, and then he used his third finger to scratch the back of his head, with an air of arrogance and just pure evil. Those are the only words I can use to describe what I saw.” However, many church members say they are glad Adkisson chose to accept a plea, thus avoiding the necessity of the children who witnessed the shooting having to relive it in court. The Reverend William Sinkford, president of the Universalist Unitarian Society, says, “I am glad that the perpetrator is able to acknowledge publicly in the legal process what he did, and I am also glad that this community and church are not subjected to public trial.” [CNN, 2/9/2009; Knoxville News Sentinel, 2/10/2009; WATE, 2/10/2009]

Stormfront logo. [Source: Stormfront (.org)]Journalist and media observer Greg Mitchell reports on the reaction on an extreme-right Web site to the museum shooting by white supremacist James von Brunn (see June 10, 2009 and After). Mitchell pays a visit to the Web site of the neo-Nazi organization Stormfront, and finds that an apparently lively discussion thread about the shooting has already been shut down; one poster says that the thread was closed because commentators were overly supportive of the shooting. Other threads, including what Mitchell calls “years-old tributes” to von Brunn, are still active. Many of the comments are critical of the shooting because of the negative publicity sure to ensue from it. Other comments are neutral. Some posters call von Brunn a “victim of Jewish extremism,” setting off a number of anti-Semitic responses. One poster writes that “von Brunn was trying to send a powerful and courageous message,” and someone else writes: “Heroes refuse to go out with a whimper. An example to all of us.” One poster writes: “I am watching the media try to pull to heart strings of white Americans who are watching. Remember if you ever question whats going around you you’ll eventually be led to psychotic acts of violence.” And other posters predict that the shooting, and the subsequent publicity, “will do some recruiting for us.” [Editor & Publisher, 6/10/2009]

James von Brunn. [Source: UPI / TPM Muckraker]James von Brunn, an 88-year-old man with a long history of violence and anti-Semitism, opens fire inside Washington’s Holocaust Museum. Von Brunn kills a security guard, Stephen T. Johns, before being brought down by fire from other security guards. Von Brunn is hospitalized in critical condition. Von Brunn brought a .22 rifle into the museum and began shooting almost immediately upon entering the building. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009; New York Daily News, 6/11/2009] The New York Daily News identifies von Brunn as a “neo-Nazi.” [New York Daily News, 6/11/2009]Targeting Jewish White House Official - Von Brunn has a list of nine locations in his car, including the White House, the US Capitol, and media outlets such as Fox News and the Washington Post. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009] A note in a notebook found in the car reads: “You want my weapons, this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do.” In September 2010, the press will learn that von Brunn intended to kill President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod, a Jew. Von Brunn did not believe he could get to Obama, authorities will later confirm, but he had the “motive, means, and intent” to kill Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest aides. Axelrod will be given special Secret Service protection. [Guardian, 6/11/2009; Time, 9/30/2010; TPM Muckraker, 9/30/2010]Shock, Sadness Mark Reactions - Within hours, President Obama and a number of political and cultural organizations will express their shock and sorrow over the shooting (see June 10-11, 2009). Long History of Violence, White Supremacist Ties, and Anti-Semitism - Von Brunn maintains a Web site, “holywesternempire.org,” described by reporters as “racist [and] anti-Semitic,” and is the author of a book, Kill the Best Gentiles, which alleges a Jewish “conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool.” Von Brunn served six years in prison for a 1981 attempt to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board. (On his Web site, he complained of being convicted by a “Jew/Negro” conspiracy of lawyers and judicial officials.) His Web site alleges that the Holocaust is a hoax, and calls Nazi Germany the “cultural gem of the West.” The FBI is investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime or a case of domestic terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists von Brunn’s Web site as a hate site. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009; NBC New York, 6/11/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009] “We’ve been tracking this guy for decades,” says SPLC official Heidi Beirich. “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil.” [Associated Press, 6/10/2009] Von Brunn’s son, Erik von Brunn, says his father’s virulent racism and anti-Semitism has blighted their family for years. In a statement, he writes: “For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. His actions have undermined your ‘movement,’ and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish.” [Washington Post, 6/14/2009] Further investigation turns up evidence that Von Brunn has connections to white supremacist organizations and anti-government groups. In 2004, von Brunn stayed for four days in Hayden, Idaho, with Stan Hess, then the representative for white supremacist David Duke’s European rights group. Hess recalls von Brunn as being “very angry about society and the Jewish influence at the Federal Reserve.” Von Brunn, Hess says, alluded to violence but never spoke specifically about a target. [NBC New York, 6/11/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009] FBI investigators find a painting of Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ standing together in von Brunn’s home. They also find more firearms, and child pornography on his computer. [MyFoxDC, 6/17/2009; Washington Post, 6/19/2009] Von Brunn also has ties to the far-right, white supremacist British National Party, and had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party. [Guardian, 6/11/2009]Eradicating Evidence of Support - Within hours of the murder, Web sites featuring von Brunn’s work begin removing his material from their pages; some of those sites are operated by organizations whose members had praised and supported von Brunn’s white supremacist and anti-Obama statements (see June 10-11, 2009). Connections to Anti-Obama 'Birther' Movement - Von Brunn has also written about his belief that Obama is at the heart of a conspiracy to cover up his Kenyan citizenship (see October 8-10, 2008). Reporter Ben Smith writes, “The penetration of the birther mythology into the violent fringe has to be a worry for the Secret Service, because at it’s heart, it’s about denying Obama’s legitimacy to hold the office of president.” [Politico, 6/10/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009]Indicted for Murder, Dies before Trial - Von Brunn will be indicted for first-degree murder in the death of Johns. [Washington Post, 7/29/2009] However, he will die in prison before his trial can commence. [BBC, 1/6/2010]

Within hours of the murder of a security guard by white supremacist James von Brunn (see June 10, 2009 and After), Web sites that had praised von Brunn’s cultural and political stances begin removing his material. Wikipedia had already eradicated his user page and changes because, according to a spokesman, von Brunn violated the site’s policy on hate speech. An art site removes posts from von Brunn, including an image of a painting he created. [New York Times, 6/10/2009] The progressive Internet news site Talking Points Memo finds a cached copy of a December 2008 anti-Obama post by Von Brunn on the far-right Free Republic news and commentary site; Free Republic had removed it from its listings soon after the shooting became known. Von Brunn’s post garnered over 200 responses, almost all positive and supportive. [TPM Muckraker, 6/10/2009]

Paul Topete of Poker Face. [Source: AmericanFreePress (.net)]A thousand people attend a “tea party” rally in Washington, DC. Speakers include members from a number of anti-tax “reform” groups, the lobbying organization and tea party sponsor FreedomWorks (see April 8, 2009 and April 14, 2009), and a number of radio talk show hosts. A rock band, Poker Face, provides entertainment and technical support. Poker Face’s lead singer, Paul Topete, has publicly called the Holocaust a “hoax” and has written for Holocaust-denial publications. Poker Face was refused permission to play at a Rutgers University event in 2006 and a Ron Paul (R-TX) campaign event in 2007 because of the band’s open bigotry and anti-Semitism. However, as the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights’s Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind will later note, “they made it to the stage of the tea party without any questions asked.” [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

A protester holds a Confederate battle flag during a tea party rally in Olympia, Washington. [Source: credit Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights]Some 300 tea party members and supporters from throughout Washington State gather in Olympia for the “Sovereignty Winter Fest.” The rally features state legislators, candidates for state and federal seats, tea party leaders, and activists from a number of far-right and white supremacist groups. The rally is to support a number of “state’s rights” 10th Amendment “sovereignty” resolutions in the Washington legislature (see March 23, 2011). Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights later writes, “This turn away from anti-tax and anti-healthcare rhetoric towards state sovereignty language points to a possible radicalization of the [tea party] movement.” Many slogans and symbols associated with white supremacists are prominently displayed during the proceedings, including the Confederate battle flag and the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Some signs read: “Kick _ss America. Remember 9-11”; “Armed and Dangerous with my Vote”; “Had enough? Reclaim State Sovereignty”; “The 10th Amend. States Rights. Yes We Can”; “FOX News for the truth”; and “Kill Government Take Over NOT our Freedom.” The first speaker is State Representative Matt Shea (R-Spokane Valley), who sponsored the so-called “State Sovereignty Resolution” that was recently defeated in the Washington legislature. The bill reads in part, “the State of Washington hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.” The bill also claims to “serve as a Notice and Demand to the federal government to maintain the balance of powers where the Constitution of the United States established it and to cease and desist, effective immediately, any and all mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.” The language of Shea’s bill mirrors almost exactly language used by far-right militias of the 1990s who agitated for “state sovereignty,” according to Burghart. State Senator Val Stevens (R-Arlington) confirms the link by telling ralliers: “When I first introduced the 10th Amendment [legislation] back in 1997, it was met with ‘oh gee wiz, what is she doing now.’ It was a national movement at that time of a few of us who recognized that we were being stepped on by our federal government. That much of what took place here in the state of Washington was the result of what our federal government was passing on us. And we wanted to maintain that we are sovereign, and that we do have rights. And we wanted to re-establish that 10th Amendment.” Stevens has long boasted of her links to state and regional militias. One prominent participant is Darin Stevens, head of the Spokane 9/12 project (see March 13, 2009 and After). With a pistol strapped to his hip, he reads a portion of the Declaration of Independence, then introduces Martin “Red” Beckman, a well-known anti-Semite, anti-tax protester, and militia supporter. Stevens introduces Beckman with a boast that Beckman is a veteran militia defender. Robertson also endorses the positions of the Reverend John Weaver, a Christian Identity (see 1960s and After) supporter and ardent neo-Confederate. A number of area tea party activists address the crowd, including attorney Stephen Pidgeon, who uses his time to accuse President Obama of not being an American citizen. And tea party leader Doug Parris tells the crowd how tea parties can take over Washington’s Republican Party precinct by precinct, saying that such a takeover is necessary because of the Republicans’ “Star of David” strategy (apparently referring to the Republican Party’s support for Israel). [Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 1/19/2010]

Logo of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks the activities of so-called ‘hate groups’ around the US. [Source: GuideStar]The number of extremist militia and “patriot” groups has expanded dramatically since the election of President Obama, according to a report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit organization that tracks “hate groups” and other, similar organizations. The number has expanded from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009—a 244 percent increase. “That is a lot of change in a short period of time,” says SPLC research director Heidi Beirich. The SPLC report says the number has “exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream.” While many of these groups do not espouse violence and are not considered a direct threat to government officials, government property, or citizens, some of them do advocate violent strikes against government organizations and/or “liberal” groups or individuals. The number dwindled during the eight years of the Bush presidency, the SPLC reports, but since the election of a black, Democratic president, along with a poorly performing economy and a female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as catalyzing factors, the number has increased, and continues to grow. “The country is becoming more diverse,” Beirich says. “Some people find it hard to handle.… These are extreme stressors for people.” Chip Berlet, an analyst for Political Research Associates, writes: “We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history. We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage.” The SPLC tracked 42 armed and potentially violent militias in 2008; that number has grown by over 300 percent, to 127, since then. The SPLC writes: “Patriot groups have been fueled by anger over the changing demographics of the country, the soaring public debt, the troubled economy, and an array of initiatives by President Obama and the Democrats that have been branded ‘socialist’ or even ‘fascist’ by his political opponents (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 10, 2008, October 27, 2008, January 2009, March 4-6, 2009, March 17, 2009, March 25, 2009, March 29, 2009, April 1-2, 2009, April 3-7, 2009, April 9-22, 2009, May 13, 2009, May 28, 2009, July 24, 2009, Late July, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 18, 2009, September 1, 2009, September 12, 2009, September 17, 2009, November 5, 2009, January 27, 2010, May 7, 2010, May 19, 2010, May 25, 2010, July 3-4, 2010, September 13, 2010, September 18, 2010, September 21, 2010, September 29, 2010, September 29, 2010, October 3, 2010, October 14, 2010, October 26, 2010, November 16, 2010, and April 27, 2011). Report editor Mark Potok says: “This extraordinary growth is a cause for grave concern. The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead” (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Moreover, the report finds, the “patriot” movement has made common cause with the “tea party” political movement, and the two are becoming more and more entwined. The report finds, “The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories, and racism.” The “patriot” movement’s central ideas are being promoted by national figures, such as Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck and lawmakers such as House member Michele Bachmann (R-MN). The number of identified “racist hate groups” has not increased significantly from 2008 from 2009, the report finds, growing from 926 to 932. However, the growth rate would have been far higher if it were not for the collapse of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a key neo-Nazi network whose founder was arrested in October 2008 (see December 18, 2009). So-called “nativist extremist” groups, vigilante organizations that go beyond advocating strict immigration policy and actually confront or harass suspected immigrants, have also grown in number, from 173 in 2008 to 309 in 2009, a rise of nearly 80 percent. The SPLC reports: “These three strands of the radical right—the hate groups, the nativist extremist groups, and the Patriot organizations—are the most volatile elements on the American political landscape. Taken together, their numbers increased by more than 40 percent, rising from 1,248 groups in 2008 to 1,753 last year.” The report warns that the number and intensity of violence from these groups, and from “lone wolf” extremists perhaps triggered by these groups’ rhetoric and actions, is increasing. Since Obama took office in January 2009, six law enforcement officers have been murdered by right-wing extremists. There are large and increasing numbers of arrests of racist “skinheads” for plotting to assassinate Obama, and an increasing number of anti-government extremists have been arrested for fomenting bomb plots. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 3/2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 3/2/2010; Detroit Free Press, 3/31/2010] A Detroit Free Press report will directly tie the Michigan Hutaree, a radical Christian group arrested for planning the murder of local police officers (see March 27-30, 2010), to the growing trend of militant activity documented in the SPLC report. Political science professor Michael Barkun, an expert on extremist religious groups, says of the Hutaree arrests: “I don’t think this is the last we’re going to see of these groups. The number of such groups has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of years.” Beirich will note that the Hutaree were not isolated from other militias: “They were part of the broader militia movement,” she says. However, her conclusion is disputed by Michigan militia member Michael Lackomar. “They more closely fit the definition of a cult,” Lackomar will say. “They believe the world is about to end according to how it was written in the Bible, and their job is to stand up and clear the way for Jesus and fight alongside him against the forces of darkness.” While “[a] lot of people are upset at an ever-growing government that is overreaching,” Lackomar will say, most militias do not go to the Hutaree’s extremes. He will call the Hutaree’s plans to attack police officers “despicable.” [Detroit Free Press, 3/31/2010]

A Hutaree logo depicted on a shoulder patch. The initials CCR stand for ‘Colonial Christian Republic.’ [Source: BBC]Nine members of the “Hutaree,” a radical-right Christian militia organization, are charged with conspiring to kill police officers and wage war against the US. The FBI has arrested the nine members—eight men and one women—from locations throughout the Midwest, and are still searching for a tenth member, and charge them with “seditious conspiracy” and other crimes. The FBI alleges that the Hutaree members planned to kill a police officer in Michigan and then stage a second attack on the funeral, using landmines and roadside bombs or IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The arrests come after an 18-month investigation and a series of FBI raids on properties in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, after concluding that the group was planning a reconnaissance exercise. Attorney General Eric Holder says: “The indictment… outlines an insidious plan by anti-government extremists to murder a law enforcement officer in order to lure police from across the nation to the funeral where they would be attacked with explosive devices. Thankfully, this alleged plot has been thwarted and a severe blow has been dealt to a dangerous organisation that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States.” [CNN, 3/28/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010; BBC, 3/30/2010; Newsweek, 4/12/2010] The nine arrested are David Brian Stone of Clayton, Michigan, the leader of the group; David Brian Stone Jr. of Adrian, Michigan; Joshua Matthew Stone of Clayton; Tina Mae Stone of Clayton; Joshua John Clough of Blissfield, Michigan; Michael David Meeks of Manchester, Michigan; Kristopher T. Sickles of Sandusky, Ohio; Jacob J. Ward of Huron, Ohio; and Thomas W. Piatek of Hammond, Indiana. The FBI recovers 46 guns, two .50-caliber rifles, and 13,000 rounds of ammunition from Piatek’s home. All are denied bail in federal court. [Indiana Post-Tribune, 4/4/2010]FBI Alerted of 'Trouble' in 2009 - The indictment cites “a cooperating witness and an undercover FBI agent”; the Detroit News reports that one of the nine defendants, through her lawyer, says she believes a member of another militia group reported the Hutaree’s plans to the FBI. [Christian Science Monitor, 3/31/2010] It will later emerge that in 2009, residents of Adrian, Michigan, contacted the FBI over their concerns that Stone was planning something violent. Even local militia members were worried, and one militia member decided to infiltrate the group on behalf of the FBI. In the fall of 2009, the FBI learned that the Hutarees were building bombs, and the bureau sent its own undercover agent inside the group. The undercover agent actually offered to make the bombs; senior FBI agent Andrew Arena says that the benefit of that offer was in placing the FBI in charge of the explosives. “We were very fortunate to be able to insert an individual who was able to kind of take that role,” Arena says. “It certainly let me sleep a little better at night.” The agent went to meetings with surveillance devices to make audio recordings of the proceedings, and taped a February 2010 conversation in which Stone declared that he was sure local police “would fight right alongside some Chinese trooper. Heck, yeah. It’s all about power. It’s about the authority. They see us as the little people.” Stone and the other members of his group believe that the US government is planning on using foreign troops to impose martial law and tyranny on American citizens. During the same conversation, in which Stone read a speech he planned to give at an upcoming militia gathering in Kentucky, Stone said: “Now, we need to quit playing this game with these elitist terrorists and actually get serious, because this war will come whether we are ready or not. A war of this magnitude will not be easy. But like the rattlesnake on the Gadsden flag, we have rattled and warned the new world order (see September 11, 1990). Now it’s time to strike and take our nation back.” Arena says that while Stone has the constitutional right to say such things, “when you start taking action towards that government,” a citizen crosses the line into conspiracy to commit a crime. “In this case, we’re defining it as they started to plan how they were going to ignite the war.” When another Hutaree member asked for the help of a local militia headed by David Servino in building bombs and planning attacks, Servino says, “[w]e talked about it, and we decided as a group to go to the State Police Department—this local here—and talk to them, tell them what little information we had.” A day after Servino’s group informed the state police, the FBI began making its arrests. [National Public Radio, 4/12/2010]Extremist, Violent Ideology - A Hutaree Web site shows video footage of military-style training exercises and describes the members as “Christian warriors.” The site tells visitors that the Hutaree are preparing to defend themselves upon the arrival of the Antichrist, “for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.… The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it.” The FBI describes the Hutaree as an “anti-government extremist organization” advocating violence against the police in its indictment of the members; the group perceives the police as an arm of the US government [CNN, 3/28/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010; BBC, 3/30/2010] , which it calls ZOG—the “Zionist Occupied Government.” There is some dispute in the media as to the origin of the name “Hutaree.” One source believes it may originate from the word “Hutriel,” which translates to “rod of God.” Hutriel is one of the seven angels of punishment and helps in the “punishment of the 10 nations,” according to tradition. [Basil and Spice (.com), 4/6/2010] They label the police “the Brotherhood.” According to the Michigan Hutaree theology, which they call “the doctrine of the Hutaree,” former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana is the Antichrist. The Hutaree’s exalted commander is called a “radok”; deputies and lieutenants are known as “boromanders” and “zulifs.” [Newsweek, 4/12/2010] Stone’s ex-fiancee, Andrea March, recalls Stone as a “Ron Paul fanatic,” referring to Ron Paul (R-TX) the libertarian House member whom many see as an ideological “father” of many “tea party” organizations. Appearing on Fox News, March tells an interviewer that Stone is a fanatical Paul supporter who feared that President Obama intended to take away his guns. “When Obama took the presidency is when he lost it because he was a Ron Paul fanatic,” she says. Asked what Paul has to do with Stone’s thinking and actions, she replies: “To tell you the truth I don’t know. I never really understood why Ron Paul was so much different, but [Stone] thought he could get away with anything and he wanted more freedoms than what he had and he was trying to do it through the violence.… [H]e clearly believed in guns and having them and he didn’t think. He didn’t want to have a driver’s license, he didn’t want to fill out any census papers. He wanted to own guns unregistered.” [Crooks and Liars, 3/30/2010]Leader, Group Well Known for Violent Expressions - The group leader, Stone, is called “Captain Hutaree” by his colleagues, or, cryptically, “RD.” The indictment names Stone as the “principal leader” of the organization. According to media reports, Stone has a strong affinity for the most violent of the far-right fringes of the American militia movement. His first wife, Donna Stone, tells reporters she left him because he “got carried away.” Federal authorities say that he researched how to build IEDs and roadside bombs on the Internet, and emailed diagrams of the devices to someone he believed could actually build such devices. And one neighbor, Phyllis Bruger, says she and others learned not to “mess with” Stone and his group. They liked to conduct “military exercises” and shoot guns, usually wearing camouflage outfits. “Everybody knew they were militia,” she says. Donna Stone tells reporters: “It started out as a Christian thing. You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far. He dragged a lot of people with him. When he got carried away, when he went from handguns to big guns, I was done.” Her son, Joshua Stone, who was adopted by David Stone, was arrested with David Stone after helping him gather materials necessary for making the bombs. Donna Stone adds: “He dragged a lot of innocent people down with him. It started to get worse when they were talking about the world’s gonna end in the Bible.” The indictment says, “Stone taught other Hutaree members how to make and use explosive devices intending or knowing that the information would be used to further a crime of violence.” Too Far for Other Militia Groups - Other militia organizations in Michigan kept their distance from the local Hutaree, says Jim Gulliksen of the Lenawee Volunteer Michigan Militia (the same group that Servino founded and that informed police of the Hutaree plot). “I’ve met him,” Gulliksen says. “He’s an opinionated man who likes to share those opinions. The Hutaree is a nationwide group, but I have met a couple of the members here, and I can say they all belong to one specific church. Our concern is the protection of our nation. Religion appears to be a big part of what they are doing.” Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center says the SPLC is aware of two Hutaree chapters, one in Utah and Stone’s chapter in Michigan. She notes Hutaree has more than 350 friends on its MySpace page, dozens of whom are members of other militias, and says that Stone was planning to attend a summit in Kentucky with other militias next month. “Hutaree is not an isolated crew,” she notes. Beinrich says that Stone and his colleagues see “the end of times” occurring today: “They have extreme antigovernment beliefs. They have rage and hatred for the federal government. They fear being put in FEMA concentration camps. They’re really paramilitary organizations.” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/29/2010] William Flatt, a founder of the Indiana Militia, is also aware of Stone and the Hutaree. He is not surprised at the arrests. “We had a strong suspicion that groups like this would be getting some rather substantial bad press fairly quickly,” Flatt tells a reporter. Flatt says that unlike the Hutaree, his and most militia groups support and defend the US Constitution. “The whole militia movement is supposed to be a goal-line defense against tyranny,” Flatt says. “If all else fails, the people still have the means to shoehorn [the government] back into the constitutional mold.” The Michigan Hutaree’s plans to kill police officers, Flatt says, is abhorrent to his group, and he warns that it is a mistake to lump all American militias in with extremist, violent groups such as Stone’s. Flatt disliked Stone’s views, which he says focus on his interpretation of Christianity and also express bigotry against others. However, he is skeptical of the charges against some of Stone’s followers. “The charges they’re putting out there, it only ends one way,” he says. “You might as well put yourself in the Alamo; nobody wants to do that.” [Indiana Post-Tribune, 4/4/2010] Arena says that while Stone’s group might have considered itself a part of a larger, sympathetic coterie of like-minded organizations, it was mistaken. “These guys may have felt in their mind that they were a part of this brotherhood,” he says. “The reality is I don’t think they’ve got a whole lot of support.” [Associated Press, 4/2/2010]Lawyer Insists No Crime Committed - Stone’s lawyer, William Swor, says there is no evidence the group ever took steps to implement any of the alleged plots. Instead, he says, the group is being persecuted over the exercise of constitutionally protected speech. “This is still America and people can say whatever they want,” he says. [Newsweek, 4/12/2010]

The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) sends what the Anti-Defamation League calls “a virulently anti-Semitic DVD” to Jewish organizations and individuals around the nation, in what apparently is an escalation of its recent spate of attacks on Jews (see April 2009). The DVD also attacks President Obama, calling him the “anti-Christ,” and includes vehemently anti-gay and anti-Catholic rhetoric. [Anti-Defamation League, 2012]

A sign outside Terry Jones’s Florida church. [Source: Gainesville Sun]Pastor Terry Jones of a small Gainesville, Florida, church called the Dove World Outreach Center sends a barrage of posts on Twitter, called “tweets,” that call Islam a “fascist” religion and lambast President Obama’s support for a new Kenyan constitution that could permit abortion and codify Islamic law. His final one reads, “9/11/2010 Int Burn a Koran Day.” [Washington Post, 9/10/2010] In the hours that follow, Jones begins a Facebook campaign he calls “International Burn a Koran Day.” Jones says that on September 11, 2010, he and his congregation intend to burn “a few hundred Korans” in a massive bonfire on his church’s grounds, and he expects a crowd of “several hundred” to join him. He also says that others will undoubtedly join him by burning Korans on their own. Jones says that he intends to burn the Korans because Islam is an “evil” religion and a sponsor of worldwide terrorism, and it is time for Christians to “stand up” to Muslims. He says Islam promotes violence and that Muslims want to impose Shari’a law in the United States. He has acknowledged that he and his wife Sylvia learned what they know of Islam by watching YouTube videos, and has admitted never actually meeting a Muslim. He has said publicly that other religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, are all “of the devil.” He says he has refused to take part in any interfaith discussions, explaining: “Because I’m not interested in interfaith discussions. That’s part of our problem.” [ABC News, 9/7/2010; Gainesville Sun, 9/11/2010; Daily Mail, 4/2/2011] He claims to have over 700 “friends” on Facebook by July 23, only two days after the “tweet” barrage, though most of the comments on the page are quite negative. [Washington Post, 9/10/2010; The Age, 9/12/2010] The Dove Center is a nondenominational church that practices charismatic, evangelical Christianity, and supplies free food and clothing to indigent citizens through its Lisa Jones House, an organization named after Jones’s first wife, who died in 1999. [Gainesville Sun, 7/8/2009] Within days of the Facebook campaign launch, EuroIslam (.info), a Web site that collects news and analysis headed by a Harvard professor of divinity, picks up the Dove World mission statement—“To bring to awareness to the dangers of Islam and that the Koran is leading people to hell”—and posts it on its “Islamaphobia Observatory” section. Jones begins posting videos on YouTube promoting his intentions to burn Korans. By July 21, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling for Koran education sessions to refute the burnings. Jones soon appears on CNN, and on July 30, is asked by the National Association of Evangelicals to call off the planned Koran-burning. In August, a Sunni scholars’ center at al-Azhar University in Cairo issues a statement condemning the plan to burn Korans and warning that doing so could have “dangerous consequences.” By early September, protesters in Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are taking to the streets in opposition to Jones. [Washington Post, 9/10/2010]History of Controversy in Germany and Florida - Jones calls himself a doctor and claims he was awarded an honorary doctorate of theology degree from the unaccredited California Graduate School of Theology in Rosemead in 1983, but the university has never confirmed this, and later says the degree it awarded to Jones is strictly honorary. Jones, a native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and a high-school classmate of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, is a former hotel manager and Christian missionary. He and his wife Sylvia were asked to leave Germany in 2008, where he and Lisa Jones had established a small church in Cologne, the Christliche Gemeinde Koln. One of his three children accused them of “financial and labor abuses,” and told authorities that “the workforce was comprised of the Jones’s disciples, who work for no wages and live cost-free in tatty properties owned by the couple.” People who listened to some of Jones’s sermons in the Cologne church later recall them as “hate-filled.” Jones became involved in the Dove Center in 2003, when it was led by Dennis Watson, and for five years shuttled between the US and Germany to work at both sites. In 2008, after being forced to leave Germany, he took over the leadership of the Dove Center fulltime. When Jones took over the leadership, the church had about 100 members; that number has dwindled to between 30 and 50 now. A former employee expelled from the Dove Center later tells reporters that punishments for disobedience in the church include carrying a life-size wooden cross, writing out all of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, or cleaning the barnacles off Jones’s boat in Tampa. Jones’s daughter Emma, a child from his first marriage, still lives in Germany and has no contact with her father, but reportedly contacts him and asks him not to carry out his threats to burn Korans. She told a German reporter that her father’s church was little more than “a cult.” Andrew Schafer, a Protestant Church official responsible for monitoring sects in the region where Cologne is located, will say that Jones has a “delusional personality.” [Der Spiegel, 9/8/2010; Gainesville Sun, 9/11/2010; Daily Mail, 4/2/2011]For-Profit Activities - Jones also runs an antique and used furniture store, TS and Company, on the grounds of the church; the company had its tax-exempt status revoked in 2009 when Alachua County tax officials determined that it was a for-profit organization masquerading as a non-profit religious entity; his bank will soon demand he repay the church’s $140,000 mortgage. Former members who were brought to the United States on religious visas have said they were made to work as many as 12 hours a day packing furniture (religious visas do not allow work at for-profit companies). He also runs the “Dove World Academy,” a six-month-long boot camp-esque regiment of discipline and working without pay. Those who are enrolled are not allowed contact with family members for six months and are required to wear khaki uniforms and address church leaders as sir or ma’am. The tuition costs $500. [ABC News, 9/7/2010; Gainesville Sun, 9/11/2010; Daily Mail, 4/2/2011]'Islam Is the Devil - Jones is the author of a book, Islam is the Devil, a phrase often used on church property. In August 2009, two children who are members of the church were sent home from school after coming to class wearing T-shirts reading “Islam is the Devil.” Jones is often seen on the 20-acre church compound with a pistol strapped to his hip. Of the phrase, Jones says: “It’s an act of saying there is only one way, and that is actually what Christianity is about. It is about pointing the people in the right direction, and that right direction is Jesus and only Jesus. We feel the sign is an act of giving the people a chance.… I think every pastor, every Christian pastor in this city, must be in agreement with the message. They might find the message a little bit too direct, but they must be in agreement with the message because the only way is the Bible and Jesus.” The sign is regularly vandalized, Jones says, and is repaired and replaced when it is damaged. Neighbor Aubrey Davies tells a reporter: “When we originally saw it, we were initially very offended.… We’re sad it is up. It is such a divisive message when it could be used to put out a statement of unity.” Saeed Khan, a University of Florida professor and a practicing Muslim, says it is important not to overreact to the sign. “There are a couple of things on this that come to mind, and first there is freedom of speech,” he says. “People are free to say, but then society has to think about it. When it becomes inflamed, the reaction on both sides can be detrimental to the people that live there. You have to make some kind of balance.” Jones says future signs may express his opposition to same-sex marriage or abortion. [Gainesville Sun, 7/8/2009; ABC News, 9/7/2010; Gainesville Sun, 9/11/2010; Daily Mail, 4/2/2011]'The Braveheart Show' - Jones spends much of his time in his office, which is adorned with a poster from the movie Braveheart and a photograph of former US President George W. Bush. He has launched a series of YouTube videos he calls the “Braveheart Show,” which feature anti-Islamic diatribes. [Christian Science Monitor, 9/7/2010; ABC News, 9/7/2010]False Rumor of Child Porn Conviction - Rumors circulating on the Internet and repeated by some media outlets that Jones was convicted on child pornography charges have proven to be false. [ABC News, 9/7/2010]

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) issues a press release, reprinted on its Web site, that condemns Florida pastor Terry Jones’s plans to burn Korans (see July 12, 2010 and After). The press release indicates that the KKK worries about being lumped in with Jones, “tea party” organizations, and others. The press release reads in part: “There are without doubt Islamic sects that teach extreme views of Islam but, going down to their level of hatred by burning their books is a dangerous and ignorant way to confront their teachings. The flames made by such unholy fires never die out! The Ku Klux Klan, LLC. opposes this most un-American thinking and activity.” It goes on to “absolutely repudiate” the Westboro Baptist Church’s practice of protesting at American soldiers’ funerals, and is harshly critical of tea party organizations, stating: “Our Associates, members and supporters are here officially ordered: NOT to attend Tea Party events or support them in ANY way. The Tea Party does not represent any but a shallow limited political agenda, which fails to serve our Nations [sic] interests. They are an extension of the Republican Party and seek to compromise it. We do NOT support any political party, all have betrayed the trust of the American people, and they have compromised their agenda to support the Progressive Socialist enslavement of the American people.” [Good (.is), 4/19/2011]

General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East, warns that a plan to burn a Koran by Florida pastor Terry Jones (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 9, 2010) will endanger the lives and safety of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Petraeus says in a CNN interview that burning a Koran “is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems—not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.” In a statement issued by his office, Petraeus adds: “It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan.… Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday,” referring to a protest by Afghan citizens against the news of the planned Koran-burning. “Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult.” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that “any type of activity like that that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration.” NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen lambasts the plans, telling reporters that the planned Koran-burning violates NATO’s “values,” and adding, “There is a risk that it may also have a negative impact on security for our troops.” Lieutenant General William Caldwell, who oversees the training of Afghan security forces, says he was informed of Jones’s plans to burn a Koran a few days ago by a senior minister in the Afghan government. Caldwell says many Afghans do not understand Jones’s First Amendment rights to burn a Koran, or why President Obama cannot legally stop Jones from his demonstration. “There is no question about First Amendment rights; that is not the issue,” Caldwell says. “The question is: What is the implication over here? It is going to jeopardize the men and women serving in Afghanistan.” Jones has said he would go through with the burning no matter what kind of pressure he encounters: “We think the message is that important. We can not back down just because of fear, because if we back down, it won’t make Islam any more moderate,” said Jones, who has said he has the right to burn the Koran because “it’s full of lies.” Protests in Afghanistan, Indonesia, and other nations have followed news reports of Jones’s plans. An armed Christian militia called “Right Wing Extreme” has disassociated itself from the event, according to the blog Christianity Today. CNN had reported that the group was to provide security for the event, according to Christianity Today, and forum posters on the group’s Web site are engaged in harsh debate over the topic; one poster writes, “This could be the stupidest idea ever in the history of stupid ideas.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/6/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 9/7/2010; BBC, 9/7/2010] A senior defense official who asks to remain anonymous says Petraeus deliberately cast the issue first and foremost as a threat to US troops. “Then it no longer is simply a political issue,” he says. “That way you can get [Fox News talk show host] Glenn Beck and [Fox News commentator and former vice-presidential candidate] Sarah Palin and [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton to agree.” [Washington Post, 9/10/2010] Right-wing blogger Robert Spencer, who runs JihadWatch (.org), writes that although he opposes the Koran-burning—he would rather people read the Koran and learn “the ways that jihadists use those contents to justify violence”—he disagrees with Petraeus’s statement against Jones’s demonstration. “The idea that in wartime one should be careful not to do anything that the enemy is likely to respond to with irrational and even murderous anger may seem tactically wise at first glance, but ultimately it is a recipe for surrender,” he writes. “One is already accepting the enemy’s worldview and perspective, and working to accommodate it, instead of working on various fronts, not just the military one, to show why it is wrong and should be opposed.” Instead, Spencer writes, Petraeus should defend Jones’s right to free speech, and use his defense “as a teaching moment in Afghanistan to say, ‘We are going to defend our vision of society, no matter what you bring against us.’” [Robert Spencer, 9/7/2010]

Protesters in Kabul burn Florida pastor Terry Jones in effigy during a protest against Jones’s announced plans to burn a Koran on September 11. [Source: Musadeq Sadeq / Associated Press]Spokespersons for 11 nations with large Muslim populations speak out against Florida pastor Terry Jones’s announced plans to burn a Koran in commemoration of the 9/11 attacks (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 9, 2010). The Christian Science Monitor has reported: “Muslims see [the Koran] as the uninterrupted, unchangeable, and eternal word of God. Burning the Koran is akin to directly burning the word of God.” India’s Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, says: “We condemn the action of the pastor. It is totally unbecoming of anyone who claims to be a man of religion. We hope that the US authorities will take strong action to prevent such an outrage being committed.… While we await the action of the US authorities, we would appeal to the media in India—both print and visual media—to refrain from telecasting visuals or publishing photographs of the deplorable act.” Fourteen percent of Indian citizens are Muslim. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appeals to US President Obama to stop the burning (see September 10, 2010). “Indonesia and the US are building or bridging relations between the Western world and Islam,” Yudhoyono writes in a letter to Obama. “If the Koran burning occurs, then those efforts will be useless.” Eighty-six percent of Indonesia’s population is Muslim, and it is the world’s most populous Islamic nation. Bahrain’s foreign minister issues a statement that calls the planned Koran-burning a “shameful act which is incompatible with the principles of tolerance and coexistence.” Bahrain is over 80 percent Muslim. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari calls the plan to burn the Koran “despicable,” saying in a statement that “anyone who even thought of such a despicable act must be suffering from a diseased mind and a sickly soul.… It will inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace.” Zardari calls “for doing all that it takes to stop such a senseless and outrageous act.” Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Husein Haqqani, tells a reporter that “the United States should live up to its high ideals and all these people who are against religious extremism and intolerance in the Muslim world should also speak up against meaningless gestures such as burning the Koran.” He also calls on Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck to speak out against the burning: “I think it would help if Mr. Glenn Beck came out against it, and said that people of faith do not burn the books of people of other faith,” Haqqani says. Some 95 percent of Pakistanis are Muslims. (The Pakistani English-language newspaper Dawn compares Jones to Osama bin Laden, calling both “extremists.”) British Prime Minister David Cameron says through a spokesman that “primarily this is an issue for the US, but clearly the government’s view is that we would not condone the burning of any book.… We would strongly oppose any attempt to offend any member of any religious or ethnic group. We are committed to religious tolerance.” Former Prime Minister Tony Blair also condemns the plan, saying: “I deplore the act of burning the Koran. It is disrespectful, wrong, and will be widely condemned by people of all faiths and none. You do not have to be a Muslim to share a sense of deep concern at such a disrespectful way to treat the Holy Book of Islam. Rather than burn the Koran, I would encourage people to read it.” Some 1.3 million British citizens are Muslims. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says: “I unequivocally condemn it. We all enjoy freedom of religion and that freedom of religion comes from a tolerant spirit.… I don’t speak very often about my own religion, but let me be very clear: My God and my Christ is a tolerant God, and that’s what we want to see in this world. I don’t think that’s the way you treat other faiths, as different as those faiths may be from your own.” Canadian Defense Minister Peter Mackay, echoing sentiments expressed by General David Petraeus (see September 6, 2010), says that the burning could endanger NATO troops overseas: “It will incite further violence and hatred and I’m concerned that this will put Canadians and other ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] soldiers in harm’s way.” Some 500,000 Canadians practice Islam. Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman says: “That is the most heinous crime and action, it’s unthinkable. There is no doubt whatsoever that it is an attack on Muslims. It will not only anger the Muslims in Malaysia and throughout the world—Christians also don’t condone this kind of action.… I believe America will take appropriate action so this thing will not happen.” Malaysia has a Muslim majority of 15.5 million. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman says in a statement: “The president condemns the announcement of a religious group in the United States of its intention to openly burn copies of the Koran. It is a clear contradiction of the teachings of the three Abrahamic religions and of dialogue among the three faiths [Christianity, Islam and Judaism].” Lebanon is about 60 percent Muslim. Amr Moussa, the chief of the 22-nation Arab League, calls Jones a “fanatic” and calls on the US to oppose his “destructive approach.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel says, “If a fundamentalist, evangelical pastor in America wants to burn the Koran on September 11, then I find this simply disrespectful, even abhorrent and simply wrong.” Brigadier General Hans-Werner Fritz, commander of German troops in Afghanistan, adds, “I only wish this wouldn’t happen, because it would provide a trigger for violence towards all ISAF troops, including the Germans in northern Afghanistan.” Germany has over 3 million practicing Muslims. A Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry official says, “This bizarre plan… undermines our faith [and] is a flagrant insult to the feelings of Muslims worldwide and would ruin efforts to preach understanding amongst faiths.” The official says that Kuwait has asked its ambassador to the US to coordinate with other Arab and Muslim envoys to ensure that the “tolerant Islamic faith is respected.” The head of Kuwait’s Christian churches league, pastor Emmanuel Benjamen al-Ghareeb, also condemns the plan in a statement and stresses it does not represent Christ’s teachings of tolerance. Kuwait’s 2.7 million population is 85 percent Muslim. The Vatican issues a condemnation of the burning, saying through the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Affairs: “These deplorable acts of violence, in fact, cannot be counteracted by an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community.… Each religion, with its respective sacred books, places of worship and symbols, has the right to respect and protection. We are speaking about the respect to be accorded the dignity of the person who is an adherent of that religion and his/her free choice in religious matters.” The Vatican, technically the world’s smallest country with a population of 800, is, presumably, all Roman Catholic. The Vatican is joined by several US Christian organizations in condemning the proposed Koran-burning (see September 8-9, 2010). [Christian Science Monitor, 9/9/2010] Jones is burned in effigy in the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, in one of a number of protests around the world against his plans to burn a Koran. [Gainesville Sun, 9/11/2010]

A Christian Science Monitor (CSM) analysis explains why Muslims find a planned Koran-burning by a Florida pastor (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 9, 2010) so offensive. Pastor Terry Jones intends to burn a Koran, or a number of Korans, in a ceremony on September 11, 2010, to commemorate the 9/11 attacks. He has the legal right to do so, but has been condemned by a number of the world’s governments, along with the Vatican and two prominent US Christian organizations (see September 6-9, 2010). General David Petraeus, the commander of US troops in the Middle East, has warned that burning the Koran would endanger US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq (see September 6, 2010). Muslims find such an action particularly inflammatory, the CSM notes, because they view the Koran “as the uninterrupted, unchangeable, and eternal word of God. Burning the Koran is akin to directly burning the word of God.” Moreover, the timing is offensive: September 11 is the day after the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting that commemorates the time in 610 A.D. when Muslims believe the angel Gabriel first appeared to the Prophet Muhammad and began “revealing” the Koran to him. Muslims believe the Koran was delivered to Muhammad directly from God, and has existed without change or error since the time of the last revelation, in 632 A.D. Traditionally, a Koran is treated with deference and honor in a Muslim household. Jones has further infuriated Muslims by his slogan, “Islam is of the Devil.” In 2006, a series of Danish cartoons satirizing the Koran and Islam set off a round of violent protests throughout the world, and was used by al-Qaeda as a recruitment tool. [Christian Science Monitor, 9/8/2010]

A number of Christian organizations speak out against the announced plans by Florida pastor Terry Jones to burn a Koran (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 9, 2010), including the 45,000-church National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The NAE, an umbrella group for conservative Christian churches, has issued a statement asking Jones to cancel the burning “in the name and love of Jesus Christ.” Reverend Rick Warren, an SBC member and pastor of a Southern California “megachurch,” says, “Book burning is a cowardly act by those afraid that their beliefs aren’t strong enough to attract people if they are allowed a choice.” Reverend Richard Land, head of the SBC’s public policy arm, calls the plan “abhorrent.” George Wood, a senior official of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God, warns of damage to Christian-Muslim relations. But Jones remains unmoved by the exhortations of his colleagues, saying that Christian churches have “given up” in what he says is their moral and spiritual duty to condemn and oppose Islam. [Associated Press, 9/8/2010; Christian Science Monitor, 9/9/2010]

Terry Jones. [Source: ABC News]ABC’s Terry Moran interviews Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida, who has gained notoriety by publicly announcing his intention to burn a Koran as part of what he has called “International Burn a Koran Day” (see July 12, 2010 and After). Jones says he and his church have conducted demonstrations before against the Islamic religion, which he calls “evil” and a source of worldwide terrorism. His plans, as they now stand, are to burn a Koran on September 11, in commemoration, he says, of those who died during the 9/11 attacks, and to protest “radical Islam” and “Shari’a law.” Such an act is itself “radical,” he admits, but “we feel that a radical message is necessary. We also want to send a message to the moderate Muslim to stay peaceful and moderate. We live in America, we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, they are more than welcome to be here, worship, build mosques, but we do not want as it appears to be in parts of the world after they gain in numbers in population they begin to push Shari’a law, that type of government. We expect the Muslims that are here in America to respect honor, obey, submit to our Constitution.” Jones says he has no problem burning the holy book of another religion, and cites Scripture which he says justifies the burning of books that are “damaging” and “dangerous” to a Christian society. He denies that the planned burning is a “publicity stunt,” and says he and his church members are “risking our lives” by carrying through with their plans: “We have had over a hundred death threats. Some of them have been very graphic.” Admits Most Muslims Will Be 'Hurt and Insulted' by Koran Burning - Jones admits that most of the world’s Muslims will be “hurt and insulted” by the Koran-burning, and explains: “Well, when people burn the flag, when they burn the Bible, when they burn down churches, I’m also hurt and insulted. But we feel that this message to that radical element is that important. In fact to a certain extent we would expect moderate Muslims to agree with us. We would expect for them to say the burning of the Koran we don’t agree with, that’s not a message that we agree with. We do not believe that this man, this church, this society should burn our holy book, there is no problem with that. But the message we are trying to send with that even Muslims should agree with. We are trying to send a message to the radical element of Islam. They should also be against that. Because it makes their religion look very, very bad. They should also stand to that and say: ‘Yes, that we agree with. We do not want Shari’a law. We do not want radical fanaticism Islam.’” 'Millions of People ... Agree with Us' - Told by Moran that “millions” of American Christians are “revolted” by his plans to burn a Koran, Jones responds that “there are also millions of people who agree with us.” He cites polls that his church has conducted, and that he says prove between “40 and 60 percent of the population agree with us.… We’ve had several times pastors come here saying: ‘We are in agreement with you, what you are doing is right, or anyway the message that you are wanting to send is right. But we can’t say anything. If we do we will lose our congregation.’ We have people who work for large companies have stopped out front and said, ‘We are in agreement with you but if we say anything we will be fired.’ That is in a country where we supposedly have free speech.” Holy War? - Asked if his burning of a Koran and his invitation to Christians to join in the burning are not incitements to “holy war,” Jones responds: “If [American Christians] have a problem with the burning of the Koran, that’s fine. I realize the actual burning of the Koran is a radical statement we feel very convinced about it, we plan on doing it, we feel its very necessary. But if Christians were to say that’s too much for us or just normal people, they say the actual burning of the Koran is too much for us, that’s fine. I can absolutely understand that. That is no problem. But they should, all Christians should agree with our message. Our message is that radical Islam is dangerous, let’s keep an eye on it, let’s say no to it. and from a Christian standpoint they have to agree with us. Because according to Christianity, Jesus Christ is the only way. And the Koran does not recognize the resurrection, the virgin birth, that Jesus died for our sins, that he’s the son of God, that he’s God. So from the Christian standpoint they must agree with us.” Jones says that if Jesus Christ were alive today, he would “absolutely” join in the burning of Korans. Moran says the burning of a Koran is “hateful,” and asks if there is not some other way to get his message across. Jones says that radical Islamists must be met by radical acts from those such as himself who oppose them. He says that no Muslim, moderate or radical, should react with violence to any such Koran-burning: “I don’t like it when they burn the Bible. I don’t like it when in Afghanistan when they burn the flag but I also do not serve a god of violence. It doesn’t make me want to kill people. It doesn’t make me want to storm an embassy. It doesn’t make me want to call for the death of the president and that is what we are trying to reveal. Of course its insulting. Of course it’s not a nice thing to do.” The burning would not be an act of “holy war,” he insists. Concerns from Military Commander - Moran tells Jones that General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, has expressed his concern about any such Koran-burning (see September 6, 2010), and warned that such an action would jeopardize the lives and safety of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; moreover, such an action would be used to recruit Muslims to extremist groups such as al-Qaeda. Jones calls Petraeus’s concerns “valid,” but says to call off the Koran-burning would be “backing down,” and he has no intention of doing so. Turning the Other Cheek - Moran asks, “Didn’t Jesus say love your enemy and if you’re struck on one cheek, turn the other cheek?” Jones agrees, and says that Christians should follow that principle “90 percent” or “95 percent, 99 percent of the time.” However, this is not one of those times, he says. “[N]ow is not the time to turn the other cheek, now is the time to face challenge.” Rejection by Fellow Christians - Other Christian churches in Gainesville are conducting services where passages from the Koran are being read, to oppose Jones’s plans and to encourage outreach towards Muslims. Jones calls those actions “an abomination,” and says only the Bible should be read in any Christian church. “[F]or us to read that book from pulpits, that, that is absolutely terrible.… Christianity is not open minded.… And when we do acts like that we have left the Bible, those people are not Christians, those men of God do not represent Jesus Christ.” He acknowledges that his Koran-burning may put fellow Gainesville Christians and others at risk of reprisal, but says the symbolic action is worth the risk. Problems with Law Enforcement - Jones says he and his church have been repeatedly denied open-burn permits by local officials, in what he says are efforts to prevent him from burning the Koran in the front yard of the church as planned. He calls the denials an abrogation of his First Amendment rights, and compares his actions to the civil disobedience practiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights protests. The FBI and local police will be on hand on September 11 for the burning, he says. Conclusion - The interview concludes as follows: Moran: “And as of right now you’re going to go forward and burn Korans on Sept. 11th.” Jones: “As of right now our plans are to still burn the Koran on Sept. 11th. Yes.” Moran: “Such a hurtful thing to do to somebody.” Jones: “It’s an insult. But we feel that the end message is more important than the insult. Of course it’s not a compliment when you burn the bible or the flag or the Muslims’ Koran, obviously not.” Moran: “It’s sacrireligious, it’s a desecration of what they hold sacred and precious.” Jones: “To them. Of course to us, the Koran is an evil book, an evil deceptive book.” [Nightline, 9/9/2010]

A photo of Terry Jones standing in front of a sign announcing ‘International Burn a Koran Day,’ originally planned for September 11, 2010. [Source: London Daily Mail]Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida, called the Dove World Outreach Center, calls off his announced plan to burn copies of the Koran, apparently in response to worldwide condemnation and pleas to abandon the idea (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 6-9, 2010). Among many voices raised against Jones is a stern adjuration from President Obama that to burn a Koran, as Jones had announced he would, amounted to placing American troops in danger and serving as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda (see September 10, 2010). Jones and his associate pastor, Wayne Sapp, announce the decision on September 9, and on the morning of September 10, appear on NBC’s morning talk show The Today Show to discuss the situation. They are interviewed in the studio by Carl Quintanilla. Jones says he and Sapp have come to New York to try to talk with a local imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, about announced plans to build the Cordoba Center, a Muslim community center and mosque, a few blocks from the former World Trade Center. (The Center will later be renamed Park51.) Jones says he has already received assurances from Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, that the Cordoba Center will be relocated. However, Musri tells the reporter that no such relocation deal has been struck, but he and Jones intend to meet with Rauf to discuss the proposed relocation. Rauf says he knows of no plans to meet with Musri and Jones, and has no intention of relocating the center. Jones tells Quintanilla: “We feel that we have somewhat of a common denominator in the fact that most people do not want the mosque near Ground Zero. And, of course, I assume all Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran.” Jones says the Koran-burning, scheduled for 6 p.m., has been called off. He says: “[W]e feel that whenever we started this out, one of our reasons was to show, to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical. I believe that we have definitely accomplished that mission. Even though we have not burned one Koran, we have gotten over 100 death threats, we see what is going around in the whole world even if we do it. We feel a little bit—if you’re familiar with the story of Abraham, we feel a little bit like—Abraham was also called to do something very crazy. I mean, God told him to go to the mountain and sacrifice his son. Of course, Abraham was much wiser than us. He told no one. Yeah. So he got to the mountain. He started to do it, and God told him to stop. So we feel—we feel we have accomplished our goal. We were obedient. We feel that God is telling us to stop. And we also hope that with us making this first gesture, not burning the Koran… to say, ‘No, we’re not going to do it.‘… Not today, not ever. We’re not going to go back and do it. It is totally canceled. We hope that through that maybe that will open up a door to be able to talk to the iman about—yeah, about the Ground Zero mosque.” Quintanilla presses Jones, asking, “[Y]ou can guarantee us today that there will never be a burning of the Koran at your church?” Jones replies, “I can absolutely guarantee you that, yes.” Sapp explains that he and Jones do not believe that the entire religion of Islam is extremist, as media reports have quoted them as saying: “I believe there are some teachings that are carried on throughout the entire religion. They are as—as there are in denominations in Christianity—there are facets in Islam as well that push one element more than others. But that element is still alive and well throughout the entire religion.” Jones denies that his announced Koran-burning was to garner publicity for himself and his church, calling the planned burning “a mission” and attacking Islam’s “radical” elements. He also denies that the death threats he says he and his church members have received had anything to do with their decision not to go through with the Koran-burning. A “Burn a Koran Day” banner outside the Dove World Outreach Center has been taken down. [Associated Press, 9/9/2010; MSNBC, 9/11/2010] Later in the day, Jones adds that his decision was swayed by a telephone call he received from Defense Secretary Robert Gates (see September 9, 2010), what he terms a promise by Rauf to meet with him, and what he calls a firm promise by Musri that the Cordoba Center will be relocated. He will later accuse Rauf of lying and by the evening, indicates that plans to burn the Koran may be again in the offing (see September 10, 2010). Jones will indeed renege on his promise to not burn a Koran “not today, not ever,” burning a Koran in a public ceremony in March 2011 (see March 20, 2011). The Koran-burning will trigger a protest in Afghanistan that kills 11 people, including seven UN staffers and guards (see April 1, 2011).

President Obama condemns Florida pastor Terry Jones’s announced plans to ceremonially burn a Koran (see July 12, 2010 and After and September 9, 2010). During a press conference, Obama says: “With respect to the individual down in Florida, let me just say, or let me repeat what I said a couple of days ago. The idea that we would burn the sacred texts of someone else’s religion is contrary to what this country stands for. It’s contrary to what this nation was founded on. And my hope is that this individual prays on it and refrains from doing it. But, I’m also commander in chief. And, we are seeing today riots in Kabul, riots in Afghanistan, that threaten our young men and women in uniform (see September 6, 2010). And so, we’ve got an obligation to send a very clear message that this kind of behavior or threats of action put our young men and women in harm’s way. And it’s also the best imaginable recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. Although this may be one individual in Florida, part of my concern is to make sure that we don’t start having a whole bunch of folks all across the country think this is the way to get attention. This is a way of endangering our troops. Our sons and daughters. Fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, who are sacrificing for us to keep us safe. You don’t play games with them.” Jones’s proposed Koran-burning could cost the US “profound damage around the world,” Obama says, “and we gotta take it seriously.” [ABC News, 9/10/2010] Spokespersons for 11 governments have called on Jones to halt his planned Koran-burning (see September 6-9, 2010). Jones has announced that he will not burn Korans (see September 9-10, 2010).

Florida pastor Terry Jones, who earlier in the day announced that he would “never” burn a Koran as he has previously threatened (see September 9-10, 2010), issues a new set of demands from his Gainesville church, the Dove World Outreach Center. He has announced his intention to meet with New York imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in an attempt to dissuade Rauf and his colleagues from building the Cordoba Center, a Muslim community center and mosque, a few blocks away from “Ground Zero,” the site of the fallen World Trade Center. (The Cordoba Center will later be renamed Park51.) Jones, accompanied by Houston evangelist K.A. Paul, announces that he will give Rauf two hours to answer his questions about relocating the Cordoba Center to a different location. “This challenge goes to the imam in New York,” Jones says at a hastily called press conference. “We would like to make an announcement to give a challenge to the imam in New York.” Paul, the head of the evangelical Global Peace Initiative, says: “[T]here is a confusion going on. We want to clear that confusion to find out if he has agreed to move the mosque from Ground Zero.” Neither Jones nor Paul indicate what, if anything, they will do if they do not hear from Rauf. Rauf does not contact the two and Paul says in response: “The last two days I have been in much prayer with Pastor Terry Jones. I asked the pastor not to burn the Korans, and I ask the imam not to build the mosque at Ground Zero. The pastor has agreed in principle” not to burn the Korans. Paul confirms that Jones will not burn a Koran as he had originally planned. Jones’s son Luke Jones, a youth pastor at their church, tells reporters that Paul is only speaking for himself. “There will be no Koran-burning tomorrow,” he says. “I can’t speak for the future.” Jones did not make a meeting with Rauf a condition of not burning a Koran during a morning interview on NBC, but said then that “God is telling us to stop.” Luke Jones and assistant pastors Wayne Sapp and Stephanie Sapp appear at the press conference wearing sidearms. Luke Jones says they are armed to defend themselves from people who have issued death threats: “The FBI’s been here four times. They told us the threats are very severe and we need to take them very seriously.” After the press conference, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, which routinely conducts anti-gay protests at the funerals of US servicemembers (see October 14, 1998), says it now plans to hold a burning of both a Koran and a US flag. [USA Today, 9/10/2010] Jones has also received calls from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in the Middle East, warning him that to burn the Koran would endanger US troops in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq (see September 6, 2010 and September 9, 2010). [Christian Science Monitor, 4/1/2011] Jones will later blame Rauf’s failure to meet with him as the reason for his decision to go ahead and burn a Koran (see March 20, 2011). [Daily Mail, 4/2/2011]

A screenshot from a television interview with Jacob Isom. [Source: A Muslim Convert Once More (.com)]An Amarillo, Texas, evangelist, David Grisham, is thwarted in his attempt to burn a Koran by a skateboarding man who snatches the holy book from his hands before he can set it afire. Grisham, the director of Repent Amarillo, a local organization which stands against promiscuity, homosexuality, and non-Christian religions, is preparing to set a Koran afire on a grill in Sam Houston Park, perhaps impelled by a recent controversy over a Florida pastor’s plans to set a Koran afire (see September 9-10, 2010). Grisham stages his Koran-burning during a rally against Koran-burning organized by the Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. He is arguing with others in the park who are asking him not to burn the book, when Jacob Isom, a 23-year-old restaurant cook, comes from behind him and snatches the Koran from his hand. Isom later tells a local reporter: “I snuck up behind him and took his Koran. He said something about burnin’ the Koran. I said, ‘Dude, you have no Koran,’ and ran off.” Reports state that Grisham’s Koran was soaked with kerosene. Isom gives the Koran to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo. Isom says that Grisham is “just trying to start holy wars,” and Grisham retorts that he is merely exercising his right to free speech. Grisham eventually leaves the park, pursued by the jeers of the rally participants. “I kind of expected the reaction,” he tells a local reporter. Jeremy Danielson, a participant in the rally who carries a “Love Thy Enemy” sign, tells another reporter: “Any time you burn books, that’s ignorant. For us to burn their religion is showing hate.” Dennis Cobbins, an imam at the Islamic Center of Amarillo, says the amount of crowd support for him and his fellow Muslims was “a little bit overwhelming.” Amarillo “has zero tolerance for bigotry,” he says. [Amarillo Globe-News, 9/12/2010; Huffington Post, 9/12/2010; MSNBC, 9/13/2010; Midnight Politics, 9/16/2010] In the hours and days that follow, Isom becomes a “hero” on the Internet, according to the New York Daily News, with his statement, “Dude, you have no Koran!” becoming something of a catchphrase, sported on T-shirts and baseball caps. Several people create Facebook pages supporting Isom and his intervention. [New York Daily News, 9/13/2010] However, Isom will later say that he becomes the target of opprobrium as well. The Amarillo Globe-News publishes his home address, and one of its reporters will tell him that the Koran is a book preaching violence. Isom will tell an interviewer: “I’m an athiest, but I know the Bible is a book of peace. I mean, Jesus was all about peace. He’s one person… you could live your life just like him. And the Koran is about peace. But she interrupted me and said it was about violance and hate. And that’s just not true.” Isom says he has no interest in becoming famous. “It should all just be kept to yourself. Everything. Especially religion,” he says. “I’m just a hipster, not someone trying to be anything. I just want to be left alone. I never wanted this.” [Midnight Politics, 9/16/2010]

Members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) ceremonially burn a Koran in Topeka, Kansas, while singing parodies of hymns and patriotic songs. The members also burn an American flag. The action draws relatively little reaction, unlike an earlier Koran-burning announcement from Florida that attracted condemnation from President Obama (see September 10, 2010) and heavy press coverage (see September 9, 2010). Only a few local reporters cover the event, and members of Topeka’s Islamic community deliberately avoid the event. “I’m glad it didn’t get a lot of publicity and it didn’t draw a lot of people to the church,” says Imam Omar Hazim, of the Islamic Center of Topeka. “It seemed people in Topeka ignored what they were doing.” Hazim says he asked local Muslims to stay away from the event during his sermon the day before. “If we had 40 or 50 of us there and they started getting angry, things could get out of control. So I told them to ignore it.” Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten stayed home to watch football, and says the antics of the WBC are drawing less and less national attention. Referring to the Reverend Terry Jones, who orchestrated the Florida Koran-burning, Bunten says: “The fool in Florida one-upped them. They were apparently tagging along on his idea, so the fellow in Florida had stolen the stage, so to speak.” WBC events are “kind of old hat now,” Bunten says. WBC leader Shirley Phelps-Roper explains that the church chose to burn the Koran and the American flag because both are “idols” that people worship. After the burning, she says: “I thought it was awesome. It was another 14 on a scale of 10.” Some counterprotesters demonstrate during the event. One, Shaun Crouse, later says: “There’s already a holy war going on overseas. Provoking it is not what we need to do.… I understand freedom of speech, but this is wrong. Burning the Koran—that’s somebody’s holy book. What would you do if someone burned the Bible, the holy book of Christianity? You’d be pretty upset, too.” Before the event, Phelps-Roper accused Jones, the Florida pastor, of “jumping on the bandwagon” and “serving himself” instead of God. Hazim said that the WBC leadership may be “jealous” of the media attention bestowed upon Jones. [Topeka Capital-Journal, 9/10/2010; Topeka Capital-Journal, 9/11/2010]

The Australian newspaper The Age publishes an analysis by reporter Matthew Weaver that examines the media’s role in bringing an obscure Florida pastor and his idea to burn Korans to international prominence. Pastor Terry Jones launched a Facebook page discussing his idea to burn Korans (see July 12, 2010 and After). The page did not garner a great deal of attention, Weaver says, but days later, the Religion News Service (RNS) published Jones’s claims that people had sent him copies of the Koran to burn. RNS asked the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for a response. Weaver writes, “It didn’t take the bait, but other religious organizations did not show such restraint.” Jones began posting videos on YouTube; in one, he held up a copy of the Koran and said, “This is the book that is responsible for 9/11.” The national press began paying attention to Jones, ignoring pleas from Craig Lowe, the mayor of Gainesville, where Jones’s church is located, to ignore him. CAIR and other religious groups, such as the National Association of Evangelicals, began issuing public statements condemning the Koran-burning plans. A British group called Campaign Islam posted a YouTube message claiming that the event would “wake up the [Islamic] lion from the den.” An Egyptian Sunni authority, the al-Azhar supreme council, accused Jones of stirring up hate. By early September, when the holy month of Ramadan was coming to a close, demonstrators in Afghanistan and elsewhere began taking to the streets to burn Jones in effigy alongside the American flag, and national representatives from a number of countries issued their own condemnations and pleas to cancel the Koran-burning (see September 6-9, 2010). General David Petraeus, the supreme US commander in the Middle East, publicly warned that Jones’s Koran-burning would endanger US troops (see September 6, 2010). Weaver writes, “The general’s intervention pushed the story to the top of the international news agenda, where it stayed for the rest of the week.” He cites American counterterrorism expert David Schanzer as saying that Petraeus, more than any single figure, gave Jones more credibility than he deserved. Schanzer said, “By having the head of our entire operation in Afghanistan ask them to refrain from this action, we’ve brought much more attention to this fringe element than it deserves.” Ignoring Jones would have undercut his power, Schanzer said. Instead, White House officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, press secretary Robert Gibbs, and President Obama himself (see September 10, 2010), spoke out against Jones’s plans. Weaver concludes by citing the 2008 burning of a Koran by another extremist church, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. “[W]eary of the group’s gay-bashing provocations,” Weaver writes, “media organizations stayed away.” The 2008 Koran burning drew little media attention and few protests from Muslims. [The Age, 9/12/2010]

Jadon Higganbothan before his murder. [Source: WRAL-TV]A four-year-old boy and a 28-year-old woman are killed, apparently through their contact with a small North Carolina religious cult. Peter Lucas Moses, the head of a “family” made up of four women and nine children, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of four-year-old Jadon Higganbothan and 28-year-old Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy; prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. Group members, all women and children, call Moses “Lord” and reportedly fear him. Prosecutors say Moses killed Higganbothan because he believed the child “act[s] gay,” and McKoy because she found out she could not bear children and wanted to leave the group’s home in Durham, North Carolina. In February 2011, a woman escapes from the group’s home and contacts police. Her identity is not made public. She lived at the home with Moses, Higganbothan, McKoy, and three other women also charged in the slayings: Higganbothan’s mother, Vania Rae Sisk, 25, Lavada Quinzetta Harris, 40, and Larhonda Renee Smith, 40. Sisk, Lavada Harris, and Smith face first-degree murder charges in McKoy’s death and charges as accessories in Higganbothan’s death. Investigators believe some of those involved in the deaths are members of a religious sect known as the Black Hebrews, which claims it descends directly from the ancient tribes of Israel. The unnamed woman informs police that two people were killed in the house. Court records show that police had a confidential informant in the case. The women call themselves “wives or common-law wives” of Moses, according to Durham County District Attorney Tracey Cline. “The arrangement was the women would periodically occupy the master suite with” Moses. Cline refuses to call the group a cult. Moses is the father of all the children except for Higganbothan; according to prosecutors, Moses feared that Higganbothan might be gay because his father had left Sisk, and Moses told her to “get rid” of the child. “In the religious belief of that organization, homosexuality was frowned on,” Cline says. In October 2010, Moses becomes incensed after learning that Higganbothan had struck another child in the rear, begins screaming, “I told you to get rid of him!” begins playing loud music, takes Higganbothan into the garage, and shoots him in the head. The women put the child’s body into a suitcase and place the suitcase in Moses’s master suite; he later orders the women to remove the suitcase because it is beginning to smell. On December 21 or 22, prosecutors will say, McKoy is also murdered by Moses. She attempts to go to a neighbor’s house and call her mother in Washington, DC, but Moses drags her back to their home and beats her throughout the day, sometimes joined by some of the other women. He then attempts to strangle her with an extension cord, and finally takes her into the bathroom and shoots her to death. The neighbor will later say she did not call police because she thought that it was a group home and that McKoy might be mentally disturbed. Prosecutors find diary entries written by McKoy begging “Lord” not to kill her. The group throws a party later in the week, and Moses displays McKoy’s corpse to several of his relatives, including his mother, brother, and sister, who are later charged as accessories in McKoy’s death. McKoy’s body is stored in a black plastic garbage bag. Eventually “family” members bury both bodies in the back yard of a house that was Moses’s mother’s former residence. Plumbers find the body in June 2011. Prosecutors find shell casings and blood in the garage and master bedroom of Moses’s house. They also find a .22-caliber gun matching the shells found in the house on the roof of a Colorado townhouse, where the “family” moves in February 2011. The other eight children, who say they feared Moses would do to them “what he did to Jadon,” according to Cline, are taken into foster care. McKoy’s mother, Yvonne McKoy, says she is still numb and cannot believe her daughter is gone. “I’m just grateful to God that justice has been served and God is going to do what God is going to do,” she says. [WRAL-TV, 7/8/2011; Associated Press, 7/8/2011]

English Defense League logo. The slogan “In hoc signo vinces” roughly translates to “In this sign you will conquer.” [Source: BareNakedIslam (.com)]Florida pastor Terry Jones, who has achieved notoriety over his recent plans to burn Korans (see July 12, 2010 and After, September 9, 2010, and September 9-10, 2010), is invited to take part in a British event to discuss his anti-Islamic views. Jones is invited to take part in a February 2011 rally sponsored by the English Defense League (EDL), a right-wing nationalist organization. Other groups are asking the British government to prevent Jones from entering the UK. Jones welcomes the invitation, saying his appearance would be “positive” but admitting he would preach against “extremist Muslims.” He says he would not burn a Koran at the rally. Groups such as Unite Against Fascism and Hope Not Hate are pressuring the British government to keep Jones from attending the event. Of Muslims and Britain, Jones says: “We have no problem with Muslims—we have freedom of speech and religion—Muslims who want to make our country their country, obey our laws and constitution. We have a problem with them, which I believe you all have also, when they go on the street… and they call for the death of the UK, for the death of Israel, for the death of America. They call for Shari’a law. They say they are going to turn Buckingham Palace into a mosque and the Queen must convert to Islam or leave the country.” Jones admits to knowing little about the EDL. Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism says: “Terry Jones is coming here to whip up Islamophobia and racism. We intend on calling a mass demonstration where everyone can oppose the growth of racism and fascism in this country.” Hope Not Hate’s Nick Lowles says: “Only extremists will benefit from his visit and, as we know, extremism breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. It is yet another example of how the EDL exists only to sow the seeds of intimidation and division.” George Readings, a spokesman for the counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, adds: “Terry Jones is only coming to the UK to address a rally by the EDL, a far-right group whose protests have a track record of degenerating into violence. This suggests that his presence in the UK will not be conducive to the public good. The EDL has only invited him here to stir up trouble.” [BBC, 12/10/2010]EDL Withdraws Invitation, Cites Jones's Anti-Gay, Racial Statements - Days later, the EDL withdraws its invitation, saying it does not agree with Jones’s inflammatory positions on homosexuality and race. Jones accuses the EDL of “bow[ing] to pressure from the government… and people within their own organization,” and promises to come to the UK in February “and organize something in London.” EDL spokesman Guramat Singh says that Jones approached the EDL asking to take part in the rally. The request sparked debate within the organization, Singh says: “A few of us have been debating the question of whether we bring him or not and after doing some research and seeing what his personal opinions are on racism and homosexuality, we are not allowing him to speak at our demonstration. He is not the right candidate for us. Although the English Defense League are sincere to what he has to say about Islam, we do not agree with some of his manifesto such as some of his issues with homosexuality and some of his issues with race. The EDL is anti-homophobic and we are a non-racism organization.” [BBC, 12/13/2010]Home Office Denies Jones Entrance - Britain’s Home Office denies Jones entry to the UK after another group, England Is Ours, extends an invitation for Jones to take part in one of its events. A Home Office spokesperson says it denied Jones entrance to the UK because the government “opposes extremism in all its forms.… Numerous comments made by Pastor Jones are evidence of his unacceptable behavior. Coming to the UK is a privilege, not a right, and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good. The use of exclusion powers is very serious and no decision is taken lightly or as a method of stopping open debate.” [BBC, 12/19/2010]

Craig Cobb, a white supremacist (see October 31, 2005) hiding from a Canadian arrest warrant somewhere in the United States, calls on his supporters to launch violent attacks against Jews and US government installations, according to information from the SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorism monitoring group in Washington State. Cobb, whom authorities belive is in Montana, writes that he prefers his followers decide on “doing something they haven’t yet done before” for the white supremacist cause rather than offer him help. He cites three instances of violence as examples of the kind of action he is calling for: Joe Stack, who in 2010 crashed his Piper Dakota plane into a federal building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS manager (see February 18, 2010); James von Brunn, who shot a guard at the US Holocaust Museum (see June 10, 2009 and After); and Joseph Paul Franklin, a serial killer motivated by his hatred of African-Americans and Jews (see 1980). “History may turn” if a few more people conduct such attacks, Cobb writes. Terry Wilson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) says of Cobb, “Money doesn’t motivate him at all; he only wants money to survive.” Cobb, through an intermediary, posts his message on the extremist Vanguard News Network. In other messages, he has taunted Wilson, telling the RCMP officer he could find Cobb “in the orange easy chair near the elevator at Flathead County Library, Kalispell, MT, 10-8 M-Th, or 11-5 Fridays and Saturdays, Terry.” Cobb operated his own “hate Web site” from Vancouver between mid-2009 and his arrest at the Vancouver Public Library in June 2010. Cobb fled to the United states hours after his arrest, as the RCMP was forced to release him because of a delay in filing federal hate-crime charges. He has been a fugitive from Canadian justice since them. Cobb was born in Missouri, gained dual Canadian citizenship after living in Canada in the 1970s, and began his white supremacist activities on the Internet in 2005, while living in Estonia. He was deported by Estonian authorities in August 2009, and then returned to Canada. Cobb has also encouraged his followers to join the Creativity Movement, another violent white supremacist organization (see 2009). He calls himself “The Orson Welles/Julian Assange of White Nationalism.” [CTV, 1/7/2011; Vancouver Sun, 1/26/2011]

A Koran burns in a firepit after being set alight by Reverend Wayne Sapp of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. [Source: PI Bill Warner (.com)]An assistant pastor of a Gainesville, Florida, church ceremonially burns a Koran after a “mock trial” that finds the Koran “guilty” of promoting terrorism and crimes against women and minorities (see July 12, 2010 and After). The “trial” is conducted by the Dove World Outreach Center’s head pastor, Terry Jones; assistant pastor Wayne Sapp actually conducts the Koran-burning, setting the Koran afire using a grill lighter and allowing it to burn for 10 minutes. An imam from Dallas serves as the Koran’s “defense attorney” in the “trial.” Jones finds the Koran “guilty” of “training and promoting terrorist activities… death, rape, torture of people worldwide,” and crimes against women and minorities, and orders the book to be burned in what appears to be a preordained outcome. The church streams a video of the burning over the Internet. Luke Jones, Terry Jones’s son and the youth pastor at the church, says the burning is not disrespectful to Islam and is a “symbolic protest” of the “evil” religion. “It’s an act of demonstration,” he says. “Every day, Bibles get burned, flags get burned. Every day, there’s a protest against governments, politics, and some of those protests, some of those demonstrations… express concerns, they express worries, they express certain fears. That has nothing to do with actions and violence. You can’t use that as an excuse so someone can physically go around killing people.” At the time of the burning, signs outside the church read, “Protesting Sharia & jihad Dearborn, MI” (an apparent reference to the large Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan), and “Islam is of the devil.” After the burning, someone defaces the signs to read, “Love all men.” [Gainesville Sun, 4/1/2011; Christian Science Monitor, 4/1/2011; Daily Mail, 4/2/2011] The incident sparks a bloody protest in Afghanistan that will result in multiple deaths, including the murder of seven UN staffers and guards (see April 1, 2011 and April 1-5, 2011). Jones and Sapp had publicly promised to never burn a Koran after canceling previous plans to do so (see September 9-10, 2010).

Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly condemns the recent burning of a Koran by Florida pastor Terry Jones (see March 20, 2011). He condemns Jones and calls on US authorities to arrest him. A day later, Afghan protesters storm a UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing seven guards and staffers and setting off a wave of bloody protests throughout the nation (see April 1, 2011 and April 1-5, 2011). US and international officials blame Jones for setting off the protests, but note that Karzai brought the attention of his people to the incident. They do not believe that Karzai intended to set off such violence, but instead think that he may have chosen to use the incident to vent his frustration with the continued foreign presence in Afghanistan. Stephen Carter, an independent policy analyst in Kabul, says: “Karzai seems to veer between being dependent on the international presence and a real sense resentment and powerlessness. He tends to come out with public statements that make clear the degree of resentment that he feels. In this particular case, he could have refrained from making a statement and acted in a way that would have made this particular outcome less likely, but I don’t think it was a deliberate conspiracy. I think he was voicing frustrations that he genuinely feels.” A Karzai spokesman says Karzai spoke out because of his moral outrage at the burning. [Christian Science Monitor, 4/5/2011]

Pastor Terry Jones, whose recent burning of a Koran (see March 20, 2011) sparked protests that have cost dozens of lives (see April 1, 2011 and April 1-5, 2011), announces that he now plans to conduct a “trial” of the Prophet Muhammad. Jones and his associate pastor Wayne Sapp conducted a “mock trial” of the Koran that led to their burning of the holy book. Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida who has attempted to work with Jones to prevent his Koran-burning (see September 9-10, 2010), says he was outraged by Jones’s burning of the Koran and calls him “a nut job.” Jones says he has no interest in causing further violence or in promoting his small Gainesville, Florida, church, saying: “We are actually not doing it because we desire to be killed, we are not doing it because we desire publicity. We really believe our message is that important, that the radical element of Islam is a danger to our society.” Muslims in and around Gainesville worry that Jones’s further actions may cause violent repercussions. [Orlando Sentinel, 4/5/2011; Huffington Post, 4/6/2011]

The Islamic Center of America. [Source: Annenberg Digital News]Pastor Terry Jones plans to go to Dearborn, Michigan, home of a large and active American Muslim community, to take part in a Good Friday anti-Islam rally outside Dearborn’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of America. Jones and his congregation recently burned a Koran (see March 20, 2011), and protests against his action have cost dozens of lives (see April 1, 2011 and April 1-5, 2011). Religious leaders from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and other religious groups plan a counterprotest that will drown out Jones’s anti-Islamic message with one of unity. The clergy and others plan to link hands in a circle around the mosque to symbolically shield it from Jones. The leaders of these groups call Jones divisive. Reverend Daniel Buttry, a Baptist minister, says, “This is an opportunity to show a different vision than the one he’s bringing.” Jones’s associate pastor Wayne Sapp, who applied the flame to the Koran in the March 20 ceremony, says he and Jones will come to Dearborn to peacefully protest against jihad and Shari’a law, which they say threaten non-Muslims with violence. Jones has said that Muslims are welcome in the US if they remain peaceful and submit to the Constitution. “Who is he to question our loyalty?” says Imam Hassan Qazwini, a Shi’a cleric known for his moderate views and the head of the Islamic Center. “Muslims are as American as he is. He has no right to question the loyalty of American Muslims in this country. We are peaceful, patriotic citizens who love this country and care about it as much as any citizen.” Under Qazwini, the mosque has conducted intensive interfaith and community outreach efforts. Robert Bruttell of the Interfaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit encourages people of all faiths to take part in the counterprotest. “Stand together in the spirit of cooperation and harmony, the essential basis of this great country,” he says. “We are calling on people to reject fear and intolerance.” The Reverend Jeffery Day of the Archdiocese of Detroit says Jones’s choice of Good Friday to protest is especially offensive: “As Catholics, we’re mortified that Terry Jones would want to come to Dearborn, where we really are a community that gets along well with our Muslim brothers and sisters.” Frank Fiorello, the leader of an anti-Islamic group called Order of the Dragon, originally organized the protest outside the Islamic Center but has since withdrawn his participation after being informed by Dearborn Mayor John O’Reilly and local pastors that Dearborn is not under Shari’a law, a myth promulgated on some Web sites. Fiorello calls Islam a “violent” religion and says, “There’s nothing holy about the Koran.” He named his group after a medieval Christian group that fought against Turkish Muslims; he also plays in a rock band that sings songs describing how they will kill Muslims, and once wrote, “I want to throw a pig head into a Friday prayer night at ye ole mosque of terror.” Of Jones’s Koran-burning, Richard Nodel of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit says: “The desecrating of holy scripture of any faith is reprehensible. When it’s done by a member of the clergy, it’s sinful. We urge Rev. Jones to cancel this despicable act. His hatred and actions are not welcome in our community.” Qazwini acknowledges that Jones “has the right to express his opinion,” but adds that religious leaders should be more sensitive about such issues. “If he calls himself a reverend, a pastor, a religious leader, then we should hold him to a higher standard.” [Detroit Free Press, 4/20/2011; Detroit Free Press, 4/20/2011] Shortly after the Good Friday protest, Jones will be questioned after “accidentally” firing his gun outside a Southfield television studio. Police reports will say that he dropped the .40 caliber handgun while entering his vehicle, a Ford Taurus, and the gun fired a bullet through the floorboard. He and his companion both have valid Florida concealed-carry permits, which are recognized in Michigan. [Detroit Free Press, 4/23/2010]

The John Birch Society booth displays a banner at the ‘Freedom Rally’ before the debate. [Source: Think Progress]Several prospective contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 participate in a debate in Greenville, South Carolina. The debate is presaged by a “Freedom Rally,” co-sponsored by local tea party groups, the local chapter of the far-right, implicitly racist John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), and a far-right militia organization, the Oath Keepers (see March 9, 2009). The rally features speakers such as Judge Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, and Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC). “The change we’ve done in South Carolina can be done across the country,” Haley tells a crowd of some 200 members. “We need to change the person in the White House.” Other speakers talk about issues such as defending traditional marriage and making gold and silver legal tender in South Carolina. The JBS has been considered so extreme that until 2010, mainstream Republicans refused to countenance its involvement in their political events and campaigns (see April 19, 2010). Former Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), former Governor Gary Johnson (R-NM), and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain take part in the debate. Paul and Johnson are libertarians; during the debate, Paul argues for the legalization of heroin, Johnson calls for the legalization of marijuana, and both call for the US to end its military involvement in Afghanistan. [Fox News, 5/5/2011; Think Progress, 5/5/2011; Washington Post, 5/5/2011] Many credit Paul with bringing the JBS back into “favor” with the Republican Party (see July 22, 2007 and August 4, 2008). Fox News host Glenn Beck has also praised the JBS in his broadcasts (see November 9-11, 2010 and After).

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